


The Campaign

by Solaryllis



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Family, Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 60,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4925674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solaryllis/pseuds/Solaryllis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madge Undersee is dreading returning home for winter break and the kickoff of her father's campaign for governor. She's even less enthusiastic that Gale Hawthorne is home for the holidays as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> (1) I'm purposely vague about the exact state where the characters live other than that they're in coal country in Appalachia; you can consider it a fake state in the Appalachian region. (2) This is a WIP that I've been posting on FFN, though I'm going to start uploading the chapters here as well.

One more exit, and then he would finally be there. Gale accelerated to the off-ramp and tried to convince himself that he was jittery from all the caffeine he'd consumed over the past two days to stay awake on the road. Twenty-five godforsaken hours in his truck with a broken stereo, with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. Even his phone had let him down, running out of juice several states back.

Well, it didn't matter. He was almost to the campus, he'd pick her up, and it would be like old times for the rest of the drive home to Twelve Springs. Those last three hours of driving would fly in comparison to the last two days.

He followed her directions to the parking lot closest to her dorm, and luckily didn't have trouble finding a spot. It looked like most students had left already for the winter break. The few people he saw were the stragglers dodging snowflakes as they lugged suitcases to their cars.

After a moment's hesitation, he flipped down the windshield mirror to check that he didn't look too haggard, saying a prayer nobody he knew from high school would catch him primping. No, not primping. Gale Hawthorne never primped. But he hadn't seen her since June, and... he just wanted to look like he hadn't driven across half the country in two days. He'd sprung for a motel room last night—a cheap one, but luxurious compared to where he'd been living for the past six months—because he'd needed to get some real sleep, and had showered and shaved, so he was already overachieving compared to his recent standards. That's what the possibility of seeing a girl did to a guy.

He checked his breath. Minty. Should he take the flowers? He glanced at the bouquet of roses on the passenger seat and tried to picture handing them to her. Would she laugh? Think it was over the top? Desperate?

God, he _was_ desperate. What had happened to him? That settled it: the flowers were staying in the car. If he struck out, he could claim they were to congratulate her for surviving her first set of finals in college. Not to accompany his hopefully-not-desperate proclamation.

Hopping out of the car, he stretched quickly and walked over to her dorm, a hulking concrete structure. He paused for a moment to imagine himself living here, the way he'd planned before everything went to hell. Would he have felt comfortable living in a bunker? Would he have cared? He'd probably have been as busy as she was, not actually spending much time in the dorm between classes, practice, and enjoying the freedom of no longer living at home.

Using the intercom, he buzzed her room. She didn't pick up so he tried again. Same. He hadn't been able to tell her exactly when he'd arrive; he'd just estimated midday. Maybe she was at lunch.

"Gale?"

He turned around and saw a girl he vaguely recognized from high school.

"Hey," he said. What was her name? Delly? Nelly? He remembered the other kids teasing her as "Smelly" something-or-other in elementary school, but he couldn't remember what the something-or-other was. He felt like he'd been away for ten years instead of just half of one.

"Can you believe we're done with finals?" she asked with an incredulous shake of her head as she scanned her card over the reader. "This semester just _flew_." Gale made an affirmative-sounding grunt and held the door for her. Fine with him if Delly Nelly assumed he was a student. "God, this place is huge! I didn't even know you were in Templesmith Hall."

"I'm not," he said as he closed the security door behind him. "Just visiting a friend."

She smiled broadly. "How were your finals?"

He made a face, starting to remember that Delly Nelly Whoever had a distinct and annoying knack for chatting your ear off if you let her. She apparently interpreted his expression as indicating that he hadn't done well and nodded sympathetically.

"Mine were tough, too."

She started rambling about a long psychology take-home exam, which he took as his cue to start moving toward the stairwell. "Sorry, but I'm late," he said, pointing helpfully to the stairs.

"No worries," she chirped. "See you around back home!"

"Yeah," he called back, letting the door slam behind him. As he climbed the stairs to the building's top floor he excused his lack of social grace as an artifact of having been away from civilization for so long. Nobody on the crew was big on chatting about tests, though he could think of a few guys even more hard up than him who might have stopped to flirt with Delly Nelly and figure out if she was single. (Or, if not single, willing to go out with them anyway.)

It was damn good to be back in reality, where the ratios of males to females wasn't astronomically high. Although, all that mattered to him was one female in particular.

He didn't know her exact room number, though luckily everyone's doors seemed to be decorated with brightly colored construction paper cut-outs of their names. It actually looked kind of juvenile. Was this college or pre-school? Maybe it was just because this was a girls' floor. She'd complained that her RA was annoying and big on community-building mumbo-jumbo.

Finally he found her door. Here at last. He said a silent prayer that her roommate was gone and indulged for a few seconds in imagining what could happen if everything went well. A reunion, a bed, privacy... All right, maybe he was getting ahead of himself.

He knocked. Nothing. A couple of girls carrying boxes walked down the hallway and he squeezed closer to the door to let them pass. One of them eyed him appreciatively and he gave her a lazy smile in return. It wasn't just _good_ to be back in the world of women again, it was _great_.

But he had other concerns at the moment, and when the girls had passed he knocked again on the door. After a few seconds he heard some stumbling and grumbling, and then the door flew open.

"Greg, I _told_ you I didn't want to talk—"

 _Damn it_. He found himself looking at a very angry, strangely unkempt Madge Undersee. Her blond hair was a riot of tangles and she hadn't taken off her makeup from last night, leaving her looking like an angry raccoon. She was the exact _last_ person he wanted to see. He'd been counting on her having left already.

She squinted at him, still holding the door's knob. "Gale?"

Obviously. He didn't need to answer that. Instead he took a step forward so he could get a better view of the room's interior. One side featured a rumpled bed, clothes strewn across the floor haphazardly, and photos and posters on the walls. The other side was... vacant. The bed was neatly made and no clutter was visible.

"Where's Katniss?" he asked.

Madge sighed angrily. "Hello to you, too. She called and texted you like a million times. I heard her. I thought it was overkill, but apparently not. You can't check your phone in Siberia?"

"Battery died on the drive," he said absently, not bothering to correct the Siberia crack. North Dakota was admittedly pretty damn far from Appalachia. He took a step into the room, and Madge stood back to let him walk in, probably making a nasty face at him but he didn't care. This was Katniss's dorm room, a piece of her life he wasn't familiar with, and he needed to see it.

"Come on in," Madge said sarcastically.

He ignored her and looked at the room. It was simple but downright luxurious compared to his own living conditions over the past six months. A bed to herself, a desk and chair, a simple wardrobe for clothes... Katniss didn't have many decorations up other than a promotional poster for the school's track team, and a calendar of their meets. A framed picture of her with her mom and Prim at high school graduation. No pictures of Gale, he noticed.

"She left already?" he asked, pushing back his habitual Madge-related irritation. He hated when she knew more about Katniss than he did. But Madge's promotion to roommate meant he'd lost that battle for now.

"Some kind of impromptu team retreat," Madge said with slightly less hostility. "She said someone on the team would drive her back home."

"When?"

Madge shrugged. "A few days?"

Well, how useless was she without even being able to give him basic information about Katniss's schedule? He resisted the urge to point that out when he realized Katniss must have told him herself. "Can I use your phone to check my messages?" he asked. He needed to know exactly what Katniss had said, needed to hear her tone. She'd sounded so excited when he'd called to tell her he was driving back for the holidays and could pick her up on his way. It was so rare that they could actually talk instead of trade texts... Had he read too much into her enthusiasm? Her texts had seemed so sentimental lately... What had she said that one night a few weeks ago? _I miss you. Nobody else really gets me. When are you coming back?_

Madge crossed to the messy side of the room, stumbling on a half-packed suitcase and kicking some clothes out of her way. She unearthed a bright turquoise purse big enough to hold a rhinoceros and pawed through it until she found her phone, which was, he observed with disgust, the exact same color as the purse.

She unlocked the phone and handed it to him with a scowl.

"Thanks," he said as he dialed in to his voice mail. His eyes floated back over to Madge. She was usually so prim and put-together. Is this what college had done to her? Turned her into a mess? Revealed the mess she'd been all along? And what was that thing she was wearing? It was like a fancy white slip, lacy and silky and just barely covering her torso. Like a bra that had grown a skirt that barely qualified as a skirt.

"Nice dress," he said with a smirk. He couldn't help himself. Old habit.

Madge's mascara-smudged eyes widened in alarm. She darted to her closet and threw on a navy hooded sweatshirt with the university's logo emblazoned across the front. Just the fringe of her dress/slip/nightgown dangled below the sweatshirt. The effect was still pretty arousing, although admittedly he'd been living almost exclusively in the company of men since leaving home so his standards weren't all that high. Still, he could appreciate her legs objectively. Those were some pretty damn perfect legs, which was also annoying. Like it wasn't enough that she was rich and didn't have to worry about how to pay for college—or anything for that matter—she also had to have great legs. And from what he'd seen before she put that sweatshirt on, great everything else.

He keyed in his passcode at the prompt and winced at the number of messages he'd missed. His mom telling him their schedule for the weekend so he'd know where to find them if they weren't at home when he got there. Posy reporting that one of her teeth was loose.

"Gale, I'm really, really sorry, but something came up. Coach invited some of us to a retreat at the university cabin to talk about training next semester and I really need to go, so it won't work out for you to pick me up. Call me to let me know you got this."

"Me again. Haven't heard from you and wanted to be sure you weren't taking a big detour to pick me up from school. I don't want to make your trip any longer than it already is. I really hope you get this message in time. Maybe you're in an area with bad coverage or can't pick up on the highway. Can't wait to see you back home."

"Hi. Trying again. I'm not sure what your driving schedule is, but hopefully you get this before having to turn off the freeway. We're driving up to the cabin now. They tell me the cell reception is crap so I won't be able to talk. I really hope you get these messages. I'll be back home on Tuesday. We can catch up then. Talk to you soon."

That was the last one. Apologetic, but not necessarily longing for him. That last message had sounded kind of formal; she'd probably been with her team. When else would Katniss say "catch up" like they were old ladies who'd missed a gossip session? What happened to the old Katniss who'd call him at all hours of the day to see if he was free to go for a run? All she'd say then was, "Ready to get your ass kicked into next Thursday? Five a.m. by the broken fence. No excuses."

Well, he knew why she wouldn't say that anymore. His damn knee. She really would kick his ass into next Thursday. Hell, next month. She was varsity at the university and he wasn't even running anymore.

He looked up and noticed Madge waiting for him. Impatiently.

"Did she say anything about—" He cut himself off. He'd been about to ask if Katniss had said anything about him, but he refused to be pitiful. Especially in front of Madge Undersee. "Never mind," he muttered, handing the phone back to her. "Thanks."

Madge surprised him with a question. "Where were you again, exactly? I know it was out west."

"North Dakota."

"Doing some new type of mining?"

He nodded, feeling defensive again. She had to know about the mining because of her father, and he suspected she knew more about him through Katniss than she was letting on. He fought another flare of jealousy that she knew so much more about Katniss than he did now.

He noticed some shots of Katniss in the photographs above Madge's desk and picked his way through the chaos to study them. There were a lot of Katniss and Madge, like he expected. Katniss looked happy, usually smiling. He felt a pang that he'd missed out on what seemed to be a happy phase of her life, but mostly he was glad she'd been able to enjoy herself. She'd been so serious in high school, so focused on training and getting a scholarship, which she'd done. She deserved to enjoy the rewards of all her hard work. He was proof that things didn't always work out for everyone.

"Who's this guy?" he asked Madge, pointing at a blond kid who was in a lot of the pictures.

"One of my friends from my high school."

The blond kid looked awfully smiley. Kind of goofy. That sort of levity annoyed Gale. Although maybe his irritation was also because the blond kid with his arm around Katniss in that one picture. He also had his arm around Madge, though, so maybe it was one of those "everyone smile, I'm taking a picture!" shots. Maybe they were drunk, which was also weird to think about. Katniss had always been so strict about her training regimen in high school. No drinking, no partying, no dating.

"She dating anyone?" he asked before he could stop himself. The need to know outweighed having to ask Madge Undersee.

Madge hesitated, which was not the answer he'd been hoping for. Or expecting. "I don't know," she said.

He glared at her. Nothing other than a full-throated, automatic "No" would have been acceptable.

"The end of the term gets a little crazy," she explained. "Finals parties, people blowing off steam..." He took her in disarrayed appearance and suspected she was speaking from personal experience. "I haven't seen her much the past week." Then Madge stood a little straighter and glared at him again. "Anyway, it's her business. Talk to her yourself."

He would if he could, but instead he was left scraping for whatever tidbits of information he could glean from Madge. What was wrong with the world? He glared back at Madge, wishing he could legitimately blame her for everything that had gone wrong in his life over the past year. The knee surgery, losing his scholarship, coming up with a Plan B in North Dakota that took him away from everything he knew...

"I need to keep packing," Madge said coldly, clearly trying to get rid of him.

He snorted. "Looks like you need to _start_ packing." His arrival had clearly been the only reason she dragged her sorry self from her bed. He knew a hangover when he saw one. "You were sleeping it off, Princess." Possibly not alone, at least earlier, if he were to guess. Unless rich girls always slept in skimpy lingerie in their dorm rooms. Apparently college had also loosened her up.

"Good-bye," she said firmly, moving to hold the door open for him.

He shot her a snide look and walked out.


	2. Driving

Madge shoved her last suitcase into the trunk of her car, and only had to do minor rearranging to get the door to close. She hadn't been sure what she might need during the break, and when it doubt she preferred to pack anything in the realm of possibility. If that had made the packing process take all morning and most of the afternoon, then so be it.

She slipped into the front seat and did a final check to make sure she had all the essentials: GPS, phone, iPod, purse, and Double Tall Iced Mocha Frappuccino with Chocolate Sprinkles. Greg always swore by eggs and bacon as the best hangover cure, but she hated all that grease. Give her an indulgent Starbucks concoction any day. And Greg could go to hell anyway.

Checking the clock, she saw she was only a little behind schedule. She'd be home in time for dinner, as had been decreed by her mother. Uncle Haymitch and Aunt Maysilee were coming over, too, which meant one topic and one topic only would dominate the conversation.

Fighting the dread, she turned the ignition, though instead of the familiar purr she was greeted by a seizing cough and then silence. She tried again, but got only a sick growling sound in response.

No. This wasn't happening.

She tried a few more times to start the car, but the sounds coming from the engine grew progressively weaker. The bright red CHANGE OIL indicator light blared at her from the dash, the way it had for the past few weeks.

Maybe she should have gotten the oil changed when the light first went on.

She tried staring at the accusatory words to see if they'd disappear, but that didn't work. A second later, she jumped at the sound of a knock on her window.

With a groan she just barely suppressed, she registered that it was Gale. Of course. Gale Hawthorne had radar for her moments of weakness. Why hadn't he left campus already?

Madge opened her door. "My car won't start."

He gestured for her to get out of the seat. Madge fought the flash of irritation that he just assumed he knew more than she did about cars. And what could he possibly know about a new BMW? But she didn't have a lot of options, and admittedly pretty much any stranger on the street would probably know more than she did about cars.

"It might be out of oil," she offered as she stood up and let Gale take the driver's seat.

The CHANGE OIL light flashed on again as Gale tried the ignition.

"I meant to get it changed a while ago... But with finals, I didn't have time—"

"How long has this light been on?" he asked, frowning at it.

"Um, a few weeks?" More like over a month. But she hadn't been driving much lately so she didn't think that entire time should count.

Gale felt around the dashboard controls and under the seat. "Where's the hood release?"

Madge had no idea. She'd never touched the engine part of the car. That's what mechanics were for, not that she'd say that to Gale. "I think it's around there," she said vaguely, pointing in the same area where he'd been reaching.

He shot her an exasperated look and got out of the car to look for it. Finally he found a lever that released the hood. He propped it open, unscrewed a cap and did some other things that got his hands dirty. Madge watched his efforts, but really she was more interested in observing him. When he was concentrating on something, he didn't look as unpleasant as he usually did. The perma-frown he usually wore transformed into something more neutral. She could almost understand why Katniss was friends with him. Then she thought, not for the first time, that he had to be the worst cell phone user ever. Katniss was constantly leaving voice and text messages for him and barely ever heard back. And email was a lost cause. He may as well have been in Siberia as North Dakota.

Gale knelt on the pavement and peered under the car. After a few seconds she heard him calling.

"Hey. Look at this."

Squatting gingerly next to Gale—she wasn't about to let anything other than her shoes touch the dirty pavement—she awkwardly bent to see where he was pointing.

"Here's your oil," he said, pointing to a sheen on the pavement under the engine. "Leaked out."

Madge stared into the darkness. An oil leak? "So I need more oil? Where do I get it?"

Gale stood and started putting things back together in the car. "You need to get the leak repaired first. By a mechanic; it's involved. Especially on a car like this," he added disdainfully. "But you're probably still under warranty so you should take it to your dealer."

She had no idea what he was talking about. "Is a leak... something they can fix quickly?"

He shrugged. "Depends. If you're the only car they're working on, maybe." He glanced at her. "Since it's you, maybe they could push you to the head of the line if you get Daddy to call."

There it was, the snide tone he apparently couldn't resist when talking to her. He stood to push the hood back into place and crossed his arms, gazing at her as though he was waiting for something. Did he expect her to pay him for diagnosing her car? He'd seemed like he was offering to help for free and offering him money would probably offend him more deeply than her apparent existence did...

"You should probably see if you can get towed to a garage," he prompted.

Madge nodded as though that's what she had been intending to do, and grabbed her purse from the passenger seat. Who should she call, though? She'd already left a message for her parents that she was on her way. Would her father's assistant Ruth Ann have time to pick her up before the dinner? Of course not. Three hours to campus, three hours back... Impossible. Everyone would be arriving at the house within two hours.

Letting her hand with the phone drop to her side, Madge eyed Gale. He'd driven here to pick up Katniss—apparently he was on his way back to Twelve Springs and had space for a passenger. Madge's house was on the way... There was the small problem of him hating her and her having been fairly rude to him a few hours ago. Would he say no if she asked? Was a yes worse if it meant three hours in a car with him and his bad attitude?

She sucked in a breath. "I'm totally late for something at home. Would you be able to give me a ride?" She spat the words out before she had a chance to reconsider. Practicality was what this situation called for.

Predictably, a smug smile flickered over his face before he bit it back. He eyed her, taking his time as though this were a freaking life or death decision and he needed to pass judgment on her and her entire life before deciding. She forced herself to smile politely instead of saying any of that, though. Be a gentleman for once, she mentally urged him, hoping he'd reach that conclusion on his own.

"We can split gas costs," he finally said. Thankfully he didn't gloat. Madge felt her shoulders relax incrementally that he'd chosen the gentlemanly route at least for now.

"Thank you," she said earnestly. "Why don't I pay for all the gas since I'm inconveniencing you—"

"We'll split," he said tersely as he moved to release the trunk. "Come on, let's get your stuff."

Madge bit her lips at her error. Katniss was the same way and Madge had learned over the years to be very careful never to act as though money weren't an issue for her.

Gale grabbed a box from the trunk and nodded across the parking lot with his head. "I'm parked just over there." It was obvious which vehicle was his: the older model truck bathed in dirt and grime. At some point in history the truck was probably red, though now it looked like a rusty brown.

"Great," Madge said tightly, pasting her fake smile on in case he was watching her reaction. Luckily he was walking ahead of her. Her mother would be offended at this truck parked anywhere near their house; how would she react to see Madge riding in it? Would it be possible for Gale to drop her off a few blocks from home? No, not with all her stuff. And he'd never go for that in a million years. If she suggested it he'd probably kick her out in the mountains thirty miles from the nearest gas station.

Between the two of them, they transferred Madge's luggage to the truck fairly quickly, and Gale did seem to know what he was doing to secure her suitcases in the flatbed. She noticed that he didn't have much—just a couple of beat-up duffel bags and a box of tools. After he secured the last bungee cord, he stood and flipped the truck's back gate up. "Done."

They climbed into the cab, and Madge felt a wave of relief wash over her at the prospect of letting him turn on some of his angry boy music so they wouldn't have to talk. He'd never let her pick the music, but that was fine. Small price to pay.

Madge was pleased to discover that the interior of the truck was cleaner than the exterior. And he didn't have old fast food wrappers rotting on the floor the way some guys did. She'd always wanted to hold her nose when she got into Greg's car.

What Gale did have laying around was surprising: a bouquet of at least a dozen roses, shoved under the seat. Were they for Katniss? Is that why he'd been so upset at not finding her? Madge bit her lip, glad for the first time that Katniss hadn't been there. Gale was 99% jerk, but the 1% of him that could be nice—like by giving her this ride home—seemed sensitive and it sounded like he'd already had a tough time in the oil fields. He didn't need to start off his trip home for the holidays with a rejection. At least, Madge assumed it would have been a rejection.

She quickly averted her eyes from the flowers, though, and made a show of buckling her seat belt. She had no desire to talk about Katniss's love life with Gale Hawthorne.

"I'll get the music set up," she offered. "Where's your iPod adaptor?" She knew older vehicles didn't always have the right kind of stereo system so you had to get an adapter.

"Stereo's broken," he said.

Madge stared at him in wide-eyed shock. Were they going to actually have to converse for three hours?

"So's the heat," he added with a note of pride.

How he'd driven all the way from North Dakota with no music and no heat in December mystified her. He just seemed to consider it extra evidence of his tough-guy status, and Madge could tell it wasn't in her best interest to do anything to undermine whatever image he wanted to project at the moment. Fine, he could be Mr. Tough Guy Oil Field Worker chauffeuring prissy Madge Undersee home if that's what he wanted. As long as she got home in time to avoid pissing off her mother.

"So," she said as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the freeway. "Why were you still on campus?"

"Just looking around," Gale said, eyes glued to the rear view mirror. He changed lanes.

She waited for him to elaborate. He'd spent several hours doing something on campus, but no classes were in session and most students had departed already. "Did you check out the track?" she probed.

That earned her a glare. Interesting.

"You just deferred for a year, right?" she asked. That's what Katniss had told her, explaining why he hadn't enrolled with them in the fall. He'd lost his scholarship after his knee injury and then he hadn't gotten a good enough financial aid package so he said he needed to make some money before enrolling.

He grunted in response. She had no idea what his grunt meant.

"So," she tried again, "how is North Dakota?" Maybe he liked it so much he never wanted to come back. She could hope...

He glanced at her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. After a long pause he finally said, "Cold." When he saw that Madge was waiting expectantly for more explanation, he added sourly, "Flat."

Okay, maybe he wouldn't be staying in North Dakota.

"You'll be here next fall, right?" she asked. "Or, next semester?" The idea filled her with dread. She did not need Gale Hawthorne showing up at her dorm room at all hours of the day, looking for Katniss.

"What is this, an interrogation?" he snapped.

"I was just trying to have a normal conversation," Madge shot back. She shouldn't have bothered. He was impossible. "Normal people _talk_ on car drives."

He snorted. "You're the expert on normal? Your family has the Secret Service guarding your house."

"They're not Secret Service, they're state troopers," she corrected, before realizing she wasn't exactly helping prove her point. What did Gale Hawthorne care about the distinction that the Secret Service protected the President while her father was just the Lieutenant Governor of the state, and a fairly unimportant state at that? Nobody in her family other than her father even had a security detail, and the house came with the job so it came with guards...

"Oh, just state troopers," Gale said. "Right. Totally normal. You know who guards my house? Our dog."

"Fine," Madge said angrily. Why did Gale have such a talent for knowing her weakest points and knowing exactly how to get to her? "We don't need to talk. Sorry for making the effort. So horrible of me, won't happen again."

Gale glowered at the freeway onramp, accelerating angrily. For such an old truck, Madge had to admit it had some power. Not that she'd say anything remotely complimentary to Gale, especially since talking was apparently forbidden.

"So, basically," Gale picked up again, breaking his own no-talking rule, which Madge didn't think was a promising sign. "My tax dollars pay for your security guards, so your daddy can buy you a car worth more than a year's tuition — that you can't even keep in basic working condition."

Madge felt tears pricking her eyes. She wasn't looking forward to having to tell her father about the car, breaking it and abandoning it. "Right. Exactly," she said tightly, hoping Gale would pick up on her sarcasm and realize that he was going too far.

"Must be nice," he continued.

Madge looked out the window at the trees whizzing past. If she didn't respond, would he shut up?

Gale seemed to just be warming up. "Your old man's set-up. Sell the mine the whole town depends on for jobs, get rich enough to run for office, get the taxpayers to pay for all sorts of perks. Pretty sweet deal."

"He sold _a minority_ share of the mine," Madge corrected, whipping her head back to look at Gale. If he was going to vilify her family, he should at least get his facts straight.

"A minority share's still worth a hell of a lot more than my old man got. You know how many years he worked in that mine? More than you've even been alive."

Madge took a breath, aware of the need to tread carefully. She knew Gale's father had been a miner and had passed away recently.

"My father made a business decision," she said carefully. " _When I was a little kid_ ," she couldn't help adding. It was ridiculous that Gale was giving her a hard time about her father selling the mine so many years ago. Then in a more neutral tone she said, "The main seam was depleted. You know that." Everyone in the town of Twelve Springs did, though it didn't make them happy about it. What else was there to do but close the mine?

"I know what happened to the miners when the new owners took over," Gale plowed ahead. "There are ways to handle a tapped out seam and ways not to. You can transfer people to other locations, train them for other jobs—"

"I agree," Madge interrupted. "And I'm sure my father does too. What good does it do? He didn't have a say anymore."

"He could do something about it now," Gale said, apparently unwilling to drop the topic.

"Could he?" Madge asked wearily. Why couldn't she go just one day without being treated like an extension of her father?

" _Oh_ yeah he could," Gale said. "He's what, the Lieutenant Governor? Second most important guy in the state? I'd say he could do a lot—"

Madge could hear him getting ready to launch into a longer rant and cut him off.

"Then tell him yourself." The last thing she needed was Gale Hawthorne's laundry list of things her father should do to make life better for the world. "I can get you an appointment. I'm sure he'd love to hear the opinions of the concerned citizen who gave his irresponsible daughter a ride home from college because she didn't take the completely obvious step of getting the oil checked in her new car." She could hear her voice getting higher and slumped back into her seat, willing herself not to lose it in front of Gale. It was bad enough that she had to leave the refuge of school for the next few weeks; now Gale was ruining her last few hours of freedom, too.

Gale must have picked up on the frustration in her voice because he didn't push it. She could see him glance at her out of the corner of his eye, so she shifted in her seat to turn away from him and look out the side window. She scowled at the trees. Two hours and fifty-five minutes to go.


	3. Home Sweet Home

If Gale could be grateful for anything, it was that Madge didn't keep trying to talk to him. She seemed determined to stare out the side window rather than even share the windshield's view with him, which was fine. He knew she didn't like him and had probably just been making conversation to be polite since he was giving her a ride. But politeness was irritating; it might as well be called fakeness.

He'd considered trying to get more intel on Katniss out of her, but that hadn't gone well before and he decided he would rather spare himself the embarrassment of not knowing as much about Katniss as Madge. Besides, the closer they got to home the more he could feel his mood improving. His mom would cook something familiar and amazing for dinner, he could wrestle with Rory and Vick and Posy, he'd sleep in his own bed, get into the woods again... In a few days he'd see Katniss, and in the meantime he could get together with his other friends from high school. Almost everyone else either hadn't left or was home for the holidays.

About half-way home from the university, he pulled into a gas station. He needed to go to the bathroom and could use a snack. Madge noticed him exiting the highway and looked up in alarm until she realized they were just making a rest stop. At the pump, she reached for her purse.

"How much should I—"

"We'll settle up at the end," he said, cutting off her attempt to pay and climbing out of the truck to get the gas going.

"Are you sure?"

"Too complicated now." He wanted to see the final mileage and make sure they split the gas costs evenly; he didn't want her to think he'd agreed to drive her home to make money off her. He'd given her a ride because stranding her in a nearly empty campus parking lot didn't feel right. Maybe also because Katniss would give him hell if he'd abandoned her friend. But for profit? No.

He clicked the gas nozzle on and looked longingly toward the mini-mart. Growing up, his parents didn't usually let them keep junk food in the house, but road trips were another story. Whenever they stopped at a gas station on their family trips, he and his siblings could pick out one treat. The selection process was half the fun. Gale could already picture the colorful aisles of chips and candy and sodas waiting for him inside the grubby little building.

"I'm getting a snack," he called to Madge. "Want anything?"

She shook her head, her attention focused on her phone. Whatever she saw made her frown, but that wasn't Gale's concern. He was mentally picking out what type of chips or candy he was in the mood for and left Madge to her own problems.

When he got back to the truck, she was nowhere to be seen, though she'd returned the nozzle to the pump. She was probably just in the bathroom, but he was annoyed that she'd left the truck unlocked and unattended. She'd taken her purse but left her phone in plain view on the seat, practically waving a red flag for potential thieves. And the stupid phone was lit up and buzzing with a message alert, further attracting attention. Gale slid into his seat and tried to ignore the phone, focusing instead on his package of mini-donuts. They were the kind coated with eight tons of powdered sugar, and he picked them because they were Posy's favorite. He could give her the leftover ones when he got home. Which would be soon, he thought gratefully.

Madge's phone buzzed and lit up again with another alert. Glancing at the phone's display, Gale saw _Greg_ appear before the screen faded again. The name sounded familiar... Wasn't that who Madge thought had been at her dorm room door when Gale arrived?

He heard the passenger door open, announcing the return of Madge and her giant purse. She was holding a bottle of water and an apple, neither of which any right-thinking Hawthorne would ever have selected on a road trip. He felt a sharp pang of missing Rory and Vick, who would have instantly appreciated the ridiculousness of purchasing healthy snacks from a convenience store. Then he noticed Madge looking pointedly at him and gesturing that he had something on his cheek.

The powdered sugar from the donuts. Damn it. Gale quickly dragged his sleeve across his face and opened the truck's door so he could brush the white stuff off his shirt and pants. He remembered now why Posy liked these things so much: she could use them as a weapon, shaking them at everyone else. Nobody wanted powdered sugar all over their clothes or face or seat.

He finished brushing himself off and turned to see Madge watching him in her typical solemn, judgmental way. It drove him crazy to not know what she was thinking.

" _What?_ " he asked.

She blinked at him, her blue eyes like a light source he couldn't look away from. "You keep the inside of your truck... really clean."

He translated: your truck's exterior, on the other hand, is a travesty. But what did she expect—he'd just driven half-way across the country through mud and snow and sleet. Why would he bother to clean the truck before finishing the journey? The only thing to clean along the way was the windshield, which... was sparkling. It had been filthy just moments before—covered with insect corpses and guts, dirt, and road salt. Had Madge actually used the gas station squeegee to clean it on her own?

Knowing her, she was probably just embarrassed to be in a vehicle so visibly grimy. He asked suspiciously, "Did you wipe down the windshield?"

She nodded and buckled herself into the seat. "It's one of the few car maintenance tasks I _can_ do."

He paused, realizing she'd actually cleaned the windshield to be considerate. And acknowledged that she'd screwed up her own car. He had to grudgingly give her credit for not being one of those people who always blamed others for their problems.

"Thanks," he finally said. Then her phone buzzed _again_ , conveniently providing him with new fuel for his Madge-irritation. "That's the third time that damn phone has done that since I've been sitting here."

Madge pursed her lips and pressed the phone's power button, shutting if off. "Sorry," she mumbled as she shoved it back into her purse. "I had to turn it on to tell my parents I was running late. It's off again now."

"It might be easier to just tell whoever keeps bugging you to knock it off."

Madge made a face at him. "Gee, why didn't I think of that? What do you think happens _after_ you tell someone to leave you alone and they still keep texting?" She crossed her arms and slumped back against the seat, scowling at the windshield. "Turning the phone off is the best approach."

He started to put the key in the ignition, but then stopped. He had to admit he wanted to know.

"Fight with your boyfriend?"

Madge shook her head, a short, quick gesture to indicate she didn't want to talk about it.

Classic. "Maybe that's your problem," Gale said. "If you don't actually tell him what's wrong, how will he know? Guys aren't mindreaders—"

"He's not my boyfriend anymore," Madge snapped, shooting Gale a glare. "He knows exactly why, and he's not trying to get back together, which would _never_ happen anyway. He feels guilty and is just trying to make himself feel better, and won't leave me alone until then. But he deserves to feel bad so I'm not going to talk to him."

"What did he do?" Gale was half-surprised that there was someone Madge Undersee rated below him, but mostly he was curious if whatever caused their breakup was something he'd take the guy's side on. Madge didn't seem especially emotional or hurt about her breakup, more interested in punishing the guy. She seemed like the kind of girl who'd overreact to minor things, like forgetting to return calls quickly enough or not remembering some artificial event like a one-month anniversary.

"I don't want to talk about it," Madge said stiffly. Gale waited a few seconds—in his experience, girls did usually want to talk about this kind of stuff, ad nauseum. But then Madge said impatiently, "Can we get going now? I'm already late."

Why did he bother trying to be nice to her? He pushed the key into the ignition. "So sorry to bother you with my concern for your well-being."

Madge made a huffing sound. "You were fishing for more reasons to dislike me."

"I was trying to help," he said resolutely, not sure if he was trying to convince her or himself. He wouldn't go as far as denying that he disliked her, but he didn't need to go out of his way to make her feel bad, especially if she'd just broken up with her boyfriend.

Madge didn't respond, which was probably for the best. He shifted into gear and drove back to the highway, where thankfully the rattling of the truck at higher speeds made it easier to ignore her.

He hoped Madge would doze off, but the closer they got to her house the tenser she seemed to grow. She sat straighter in her seat, like she had a steel bar in her spine. She also seemed to be twitching more—jiggling her feet, twisting her hands together. She'd been angry about the unwanted text messages from that Greg guy, but she hadn't turned her phone on to give her any new reasons to be anxious. Gale wondered if the guy lived near her and she was worried about seeing him over the break...

"This is the exit," she said as they passed the sign for the main exit to the state capitol, where her family lived now. After Madge's dad traded up from his local, part-time gig as a representative in the state legislature and became lieutenant governor, her family had moved from Twelve Springs to the state capitol. It was only about a 45-minute drive from Twelve Springs, but to Gale it might as well have been thousands of miles, separated by several mountains and an obvious difference in prosperity. Katniss usually visited Madge a few times a year, and always came back raving about things like how much fun the new water park in the city was or how good all the bakeries were. Only the most essential businesses were hanging on in Twelve Springs. Gale's mom had told him recently there was even talk of closing the post office.

Madge pulled down the passenger side visor and checked her hair in the little mirror, making microscopic adjustments. "Take a right onto State Street. Go four lights, then take another right. The estate is at the end of the boulevard."

 _The estate._ And she thought she had any claims to being considered normal? Right. But Gale kept his comments to himself as he decelerated into the turn. Just a few more minutes of chauffeuring this preening princess around and then he'd be free.

"Is that clock on North Dakota time?" Madge asked, looking nervously at the display on the dash.

He reached over and hit the button to push the time up an hour. "Not anymore."

Madge didn't seem to be comforted and kept watching the clock as though staring at it could change the numbers. Then she checked her reflection in the visor mirror, pulled a silver tube from her purse, and started using it to touch up her mascara. As far as Gale could tell, she looked totally fine and seemed to just be nervously fine-tuning her appearance more than anything else. He could practically feel her anxious energy and was tempted to flip the mirror up and order her to take a deep breath and chill out instead of obsessing about her makeup.

He had to stop at a red light, and the absence of the truck's highway rattling made the silence that much more noticeable. Madge had moved on to messing with her lipstick, which she really didn't even need.

"How late are you?" he asked, mostly to fill the silence.

"Late enough," she said grimly.

"Your folks pretty strict?"

"About certain things." She blinked a few times at her reflection and then glanced at him. "You know, about the important stuff in life like making sure I'm wearing the right color dress for photo ops, that I smile at the right times when important people make jokes that aren't funny. Being on time, all the time." He wasn't used to Madge directing her sarcasm at targets other than himself and didn't say anything, wondering if she'd keep going. Being around her was like playing a game, always waiting for the real Madge Undersee to pop out from her carefully constructed exterior.

Madge turned back to the mirror. "Hopefully they're still having drinks before dinner and will be _just_ happy enough from happy hour to not get too annoyed about me being late. Or breaking my car," she added, almost as an afterthought.

"It's fixable," Gale said. "Your car. Oil leaks are pretty common."

She paused messing with her makeup to glance at him. "They are?"

He stifled a snide remark about how she hadn't known that. (Although, really, how could she not have known that?) "Sure," he forced himself to say. "But you need to catch them before they screw up the car. Oil to your car is like blood to your body."

Madge nodded seriously as she listened to him. "Right. That makes sense. There are so many warning lights in that car, and it still drove when they were on so I didn't think they were all that serious..."

The light changed and Gale started driving again. Give him his good old truck any day over a complicated electronic machine like Madge's car. "Well, like my pop always said: the more bells and whistles, the more that can go wrong." His father had been firm believer in used vehicles, and not just because that's what the Hawthornes could afford.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Madge nod again, and then she went back to fidgeting with her appearance, checking that her earrings were straight or something similarly trivial. After another couple of minutes, she pointed out where he should turn: a wide wrought-iron gate at a gap in a tall stone wall.

Gale slowed and turned, stopping the truck while a pot-bellied, white-haired guard ambled over from the gatehouse. The guard wore a suspicious expression, but relaxed and smiled when he spotted Madge waving from the passenger seat. He waved back and gestured for them to proceed along a seemingly endless road into darkness lit only by periodic lampposts.

Eventually a large, brightly illuminated house at the top of a hemisphere driveway emerged. Pillars two-stories tall framed the front door, and an immaculately trimmed lawn was ringed by shrubbery adorned with white Christmas lights. Gale's beat-up truck was sorely out of place amongst the sleek SUVs and sedans parked near the front door.

He noticed Madge nervously smoothing her skirt and thought for a moment about how strange it would feel to come home to this place, to feel like you had to dress up to walk in your front door.

"This dinner a big deal?" he asked as he pulled in behind a black Range Rover.

"Kind of," she admitted, gathering her purse while peering anxiously out the window to the house. "My aunt and uncle are here, and some other people so everyone can talk about—" She cut herself off. "Boring political stuff."

The double doors at the front of the house opened and a woman who looked like an older, colder version of Madge walked out. She was clutching a wine glass with one hand and holding a shimmery silver shawl to her shoulders with the other. No smile to be seen.

"My mother," Madge said quietly, pausing to check her reflection one last time in the mirror. She took a deep breath and then quickly hopped out of the truck, brightly calling "Hi, Mom!" as she walked toward the front door. "Did you get my message? Something's wrong with my car so I had to leave it on campus and got a ride from a friend. I'm so sorry I'm late."

Gale couldn't hear Mrs. Undersee's response, though Madge started rambling about an oil leak so he guessed they were talking about the car. He climbed out of the truck and took a moment to stretch his arms. Almost home now. He didn't regret driving rather than flying—it was cheaper and he needed to save all the money he could—but man was it rough on his body.

He busied himself unhooking the bungee cords in the truck's bed while Madge and her mother continued their muted conversation. He couldn't hear most of it, though Mrs. Undersee's frown and occasional disapproving glances in his direction spoke volumes. And her disapproval didn't appear to be limited to him; he heard snippets of a lengthy exchange about how wrinkled Madge's clothes had gotten on the drive and how she needed to change into a dress her mother had just picked up from the dry cleaners. He thought Madge had been exaggerating earlier with that comment about wearing the right color of dress, but apparently not.

By the time he'd collected Madge's luggage and walked it over to them, Madge was ready to introduce him.

"Gale, my mother. Mom, this is Gale Hawthorne, one of Katniss's friends from back home in Twelve Springs. He very kindly gave me a ride so I wouldn't be any later than I already am."

Mrs. Undersee turned back to Madge. "I thought you said last week his name was Greg."

Madge very smoothly said, "No. There is no Greg. This is Gale."

Mrs. Undersee looked like she wanted more explanation, but Madge didn't offer anything. Gale wondered what Madge's angle was—talking about that Greg guy was one of the few times she had dropped her polished façade with him, and here she was not reacting in the slightest when her mother asked about the same guy.

He couldn't wonder what Madge was up to for long, though, because Mrs. Undersee turned to shake his hand, her eyes carefully cataloging the state of his truck, his clothes, and whatever else people like her noticed when judging others.

"A pleasure to meet you, Gale. Are you a freshman, too?"

"No, ma'am, not a student."

Gale didn't feel the need to share anything more about his life with this woman, who'd probably already made up her mind about him. After waiting a few moments, Mrs. Undersee said, "Well. I'm so sorry Madge disrupted your day with her thoughtlessness."

"No trouble," he said evenly. He didn't like the way Madge's mother was so determined to make Madge feel bad about being late. Car problems happened.

Mrs. Undersee let her gaze fall back to his truck and looked like it was taking every ounce of willpower she had to not curl her lips in disgust.

"It's lucky you made it here in once piece," she murmured to Madge. Gale wasn't sure if she meant for him to hear or not. He suspected she did.

" _Mom_ ," Madge hissed under her breath.

Mrs. Undersee stopped her perusal of Gale's truck to pause and flash him the same insincere smile he'd seen Madge give him when she was trying to wheedle a ride home. He was struck by the difference between this woman and his own mother, who would have already grabbed one of the suitcases and ushered him and whoever he was with inside for dinner. But picking up a suitcase would require Mrs. Undersee to set down her wine glass, and if Gale was certain of one thing in his life, it was that he wasn't invited to this dinner.

Reaching into a small silver clutch tucked under her arm, Mrs. Undersee pulled out two crisp $100 bills and held them toward Gale. "Thank you for your assistance today."

The bills were so clean and flat they looked fake. It took Gale a moment to realize that she was trying to pay him for giving Madge a ride home.

"That's too much," he said tersely.

"Nonsense." Mrs. Undersee kept her hand extended, staring him down. "Between the poor gas mileage on that vehicle, whatever your regular hourly laboring charge is, and saving us the cost of having to collect Madge ourselves, I'm sure it's barely adequate."

Jesus, was she just playing with him? Taunting him? Daring him to refuse to be paid for allowing her to be rude to him and her daughter? It was only a three-hour drive and he was coming this direction anyway. For all Mrs. Undersee knew, he was Madge's new best friend—or boyfriend, since this Greg jerk was out of the picture—and could be offended by her mother treating him like hired help. He shot a perplexed look at Madge, who looked like she wanted to melt into the driveway.

"Mom, I'll sort out how much I owe him for the ride."

Mrs. Undersee didn't even look at her daughter, still focused on Gale. "Why? We can just take care of it now." She glanced at Madge. "It all comes out of the same pot, doesn't it, dear?"

Madge didn't have a response and looked down at the ground in defeat. That's what finally got to Gale.

Screw the money.

"Oh, no charge," he told Madge's mother in his best attempt at a suck-up tone. "I'd do anything for Madge. She's the best. Any excuse to spend more time with her."

He forced himself to smile at Mrs. Undersee, whose eyes narrowed, confirming that he'd picked the right strategy. The idea of a grubby laborer with a dirty truck so much as thinking about her precious princess was not something she could tolerate. Point for Gale. Even better, he could see Madge struggling not to smile, aware of what he was doing. Nobody knew better than Madge how little Gale wanted to spend time with her. The urge to get back at Madge's mother was stronger.

He decided to push it, turning to face Madge and leaning closer so he could brush an invisible piece of lint from her shoulder. It was an intimate gesture and it gave him the chance to wink at her and see if she wanted to play along. They'd both been wronged. Madge's sly smile, hidden from her mother's sightline, was the answer he needed.

"Madge, let me help you get your stuff inside," he said as slid past her—much closer than necessary, close enough to smell her shampoo—to grab the closest suitcase. He added in a lower tone, supposedly for Madge's ears only but loud enough for her mother to hear, "I can't wait to see your bedroom."

"My pleasure," Madge murmured, matching his volume. She gave him a flirty smile and found excuses to touch his arms and bump into him as they collected her remaining luggage. He was impressed that she knew how to put on such a good show, subtle enough to be convincing.

"I'll be back down soon," Madge told her mother once they had all her luggage and were walking toward the front door.

Gale glanced back at Mrs. Undersee, expecting to see her fuming with indignation. Instead, she was standing in the same spot in the driveway, calmly watching them as she sipped her wine, the rejected bills folded between her fingers like a cigarette. She was like a snake, Gale thought. A viper plotting out its next attack. And she wasn't even the politician. He started a mental countdown until he could leave and get back to his own house and family. When his mom was mad at him, she just yelled, which was how it should be.

He followed Madge into the house, trying not to stare too obviously at the grand entry hall decorated with portraits of previous office holders, who were uniformly old, grumpy-looking white guys with bad hair. The collection was clearly part of the house, which Madge had said came with her father's job. But there were also large, brightly colored decorative glass sculptures displayed on pedestals in the hallway. He guessed the glass things were art, and expensive art at that. What was the point? Just to waste money? Flaunt it that they could waste money? After seeing Mrs. Undersee in action, he wouldn't put it past her. He knew the Undersees were wealthy, but he hadn't quite known what that translated to on a household level. It put his own family's circumstances into even sharper relief.

The sounds of people socializing and laughing drifted into the entryway from another part of the house. In the distance, Gale could see a collection of well-dressed people standing around with cocktails, the event Madge was late for.

"Everyone's waiting in the dining room for you, Madge," her mother called up the staircase, walking across and out of the foyer without pausing or looking up at Madge and Gale. "Don't disrespect everyone else's time more than you already have."

Madge didn't stop trudging up the stairs with her suitcases. She didn't say anything, but Gale noticed how stiff her movements were. At the top of the staircase, she waited for him.

"I'm sorry about my mom." She sounded weary, like she'd hauled her luggage all the way from the university on foot. "She has some... issues."

"You can't control your parents."

Madge blinked and stared at him. "Not even my father? Shouldn't I have been able to stop him from selling the mine when I was ten?"

He stared back at her, annoyed. "That's not what I said. Before." He wasn't sure exactly why it had always seemed right to blame Madge for things her father did (or didn't do). The unfairness of life being easier for her because of who her parents were just bugged him; he hadn't thought much about it. Then he rolled his eyes, the closest he was going to get to apologizing for jumping down her throat in the car. "Where's your room?"

Madge couldn't hide a small, satisfied smile, but he decided to let it go and silently followed her down the hallway. Her bedroom turned out to be a suite with its own bathroom, of course. Even accounting for the fact that Madge had been living in the dorm for the past semester, the room didn't look inhabited. All the furniture and furnishings were color-coordinated in pastels that reminded him of Easter eggs, a color scheme as unobtrusive as the public image of Madge herself. The hungover shrew he'd encountered in the dorm today was a completely different story. He wondered if her dorm room was a disaster area because she didn't have someone picking up after her away from home. He'd have to ask Katniss.

"You can just put them down anywhere," Madge said, dropping her own suitcases and setting her purse on a dresser lined with perfume bottles and a jewelry box the size of a microwave. She pawed through the purse and pulled out two crumpled $20s. "Is this enough for the gas?"

"Yeah, that's good," he said, stowing the bills in his worn-out wallet. $40 matched his own calculations of her share for the drive. He glanced up at Madge. "Your mom was messing with me, right? With the money?"

Madge nodded regretfully.

He chuckled lightly as he tucked his wallet into his back pocket again. "Good. Then I don't feel bad for messing back."

Madge smiled wanly, her eyes flitting over her bedroom and pausing on a pale blue dress hanging on the back of her door. She didn't seem thrilled to be home, not that Gale blamed her with the type of welcome she'd just endured. Her parents most likely hadn't seen her in months, and her mother acted like Madge had purposefully sabotaged her car so she'd be late. Her father hadn't left the party to greet her.

Taking a few steps backward, Madge sat delicately on the edge of her bed, creating a small indentation in the sea of swirling whites and lilacs. Gale couldn't help himself from thinking that he wouldn't mind all that much if Madge wanted to piss off her mother even more by making out with him instead of going to some fancy dinner. An image of Madge wearing that skimpy lace thing he'd seen in her dorm room flashed through his memory.

But one look at Madge's face banished those thoughts. She was a million miles away, staring blankly at the white carpet. ( _White carpet?_ What kind of horrible idea was that?) And of course there was the fact that they didn't really even like one another. He'd been deprived of female company for so long his brain was acting up.

Still, Madge looked upset and he didn't feel like he could walk away from her yet. He shoved his hands into his pockets and asked quietly, "You going to be all right?"

Madge winced and looked up at him, belatedly realizing he was still there. She shrugged and gazed out her bedroom's open doorway.

"He's going to run for governor," she said in a flat tone. "That's what this stupid dinner is about and why my mom is so keyed up. We're talking with the key campaign people about whether the family is on board. For formality's sake—of course we'll support him and the campaign—but talking about it beforehand is supposed to make us feel like we're part of the decision. I'll bet anything he's going to announce his candidacy at our holiday party next week."

Gale didn't understand why Madge was acting like this was a death sentence. "What's wrong with that?"

Madge looked at him like he was crazy. "The campaign will be horrible. Nothing is private, every stupid little comment will become a soundbite blown up out of proportion and out of context. There will be endless events and appearances and rallies, there's no break. And there's going to be a lot of national attention on this race, so it's guaranteed to be nastier than usual." She frowned at him. "People like you already hate me on principle when you're only vaguely aware of who I am, so how is that going to improve?"

She took a breath, seeming to suddenly realize that she'd said more than she intended. "Sorry," she said. "I just... I was 15 during the last campaign and everyone mostly left me alone because I was a minor, but they'll consider me fair game now, and my parents will expect me to be involved, and..." She stood up quickly and crossed the room to her dresser, which she opened and started pawing through. "I just needed to get this off my chest before I go to dinner so I wouldn't explode." She pulled a cream colored sweater out of the drawer and slipped her arms into it, looking over at Gale. "Please don't tell anyone; it's not public yet that he's thinking of running. You won't say anything, will you?"

Who would he tell? Katniss probably knew already and he couldn't think of anyone else who would even remotely care about Madge's father running for governor. He shook his head, still surprised by Madge's outburst. Why was she telling all this to him? Was it just because he was the closest warm body within speaking range? She had a phone, didn't she? And was she seriously bitching to _him_ about how difficult her life was about to become because her power hungry father wanted even more power?

He opened his mouth to tell her off, but closed it again when he saw how upset she looked. In her little Madge universe, this was a big deal, and she was the one who had to live in this universe while he went home to family members who would probably maul him at the door they'd be so excited to see him.

"Maybe he'll lose," Gale finally said. Very diplomatically, he thought.

"That would be even worse," Madge said incredulously, as though it was so obvious it went without saying. "He _should_ win. He'd be _good_."

Gale picked up on a challenging tone in her voice, like she was daring him to contradict her, but he didn't even know who her father was running against. He couldn't argue without proper ammunition, as difficult as it was to pass up an opportunity to see the unfiltered side of Madge. There was something more real about her when she was angry. And he definitely preferred an angry Madge to a defeated and resigned Madge, the way she'd been when her mother was hassling them outside.

But really, he had more important things to do with his time than argue with her, like seeing his family for the first time in six months.

"I should get home," he said calmly, purposefully not responding to Madge's comment about her father.

Madge hesitated for a moment and he thought he saw a glimmer of hurt register on her face. But just as quickly she recovered and briskly walked to the door of her bedroom. "I'll walk you out," she said. "Sorry again about my mother and I really do appreciate the ride home."

Her voice and her demeanor had returned to the cool, collected Madge he remembered. Gale noticed, though, that on her way out she knocked the blue dress from the back of her door onto the floor without a second glance.


	4. Not Quite Fine Dining

Madge watched through the foyer window as Gale's truck rumbled away down the long driveway to the road. Even though he was a jerk like 85% of the time, she'd still rather be making an escape with him than going to the dinner she was late for. She took a moment to try to compose herself before walking into the dining room, imagining she was wearing a suit of invisible armor that would make her immune to her mother's accusatory glances. Because now, on top of being late, Madge had committed the crime of blatantly siding with Gale after her mother had treated him so poorly. She cringed at the memory of her mother trying to get him to take so much money.

The sounds of cocktail-fueled laughter from the dining room grew louder as Madge approached, and she was both relieved and annoyed to see that everyone was still standing and enjoying their drinks. Her late arrival hadn't actually disrupted the event; her mother had overreacted. Luckily, her mother was busy playing hostess, circulating amongst the guests, smiling and laughing at who knows what. Madge tried to catch her father's eye, but he was deep in a conversation with a middle-aged man she didn't recognize.

Skirting along the perimeter of the room, Madge maneuvered over to the bar and poured a ginger ale. Eyeing the vodka, she wondered if she could get away with a booster shot.

"Cheers," a voice to her right boomed. She turned to see Uncle Haymitch, buzzed but not yet tipsy. His tie was straight, a good sign. "A toast to the college girl."

Madge clinked her glass to his and then hugged him. "Good to see you." He smelled like aftershave and gin, with an emphasis on the gin.

"You feel smarter yet?"

"No, but," she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "I may have made some improvements in my tolerance."

"Well, there you go. All that tuition went to a good cause. I'll drink to that." He winked at her and sipped the last of his martini before turning to the bar to refill his glass. "You ready for this whirlwind to start?"

Madge carefully leaned back against the bar and shook her head, taking the opportunity to scan the room to see who else was attending. Besides her parents and Uncle Haymitch and Aunt Maysilee, she recognized her father's assistant Ruth Ann and various staffers she vaguely recalled from the previous campaign... There were a few people she hadn't seen before, mostly people her parents' age, though there was one guy who looked like he was in his 20s.

"Kevin Wehling," Haymitch said, following Madge's gaze. "Our secret weapon. He helped get Senator Kruzelwich elected two years ago. Been working as his deputy chief of staff since then. Impressive resume for his age. Knows everyone."

Madge finished Haymitch's sentence: everyone _who matters_. From what she could see, Kevin fit the image of an ambitious, successful politico-in-training: at home in a suit, expensive haircut, ready smile. He had his hand on his conversation partner's shoulder, a move Madge had seen her father use countless times to create a sense of camaraderie. Thinking of her father, she tried again to catch his attention, but he'd moved to the opposite end of the room and was engrossed a new conversation. Was he going to even say 'hello, sole child of mine, welcome back from your first months living away from home'? Did he think the two-minute phone call they'd had three weeks ago, when he'd mentioned that he was thinking about running for office, counted as having discussed it with her?

"Hey, kiddo," called a friendly voice. Seconds later Madge was scooped into a hug by her Aunt Maysilee. Maysilee practically lived in business attire—she was wearing a dark blue pantsuit tonight—but couldn't pass up funky accessories, which she usually picked up from boutiques or artisans at local craft markets. Tonight's necklace featured large, polished white stones alternating with metal spirals. "How's my favorite niece? You raising hell over there at school?"

"You know me," Madge said with a smile, hugging her back. "And now here I am, causing the world to end by being late tonight. According to my mom."

"Hmmm," Maysilee said neutrally, turning to locate her sister across the room. Madge saw her mother glance over at them—probably using her twin ESP powers to pick up on Maysilee watching her. Mrs. Undersee frowned at Madge, no doubt realizing that her daughter had not, in fact, worn the blue dress Mrs. Undersee had picked out for her.

Besides the fact that Madge wasn't about to give in to her mother's will by wearing that stupid dress, she thought it made her look like she was about seven years old. And Amish. She calmly smoothed the barely-there wrinkles in her perfectly acceptable skirt and ignored her mother.

"Your mom wants this night to go well," Maysilee said, turning back to Madge. "Some of the leaders from the national party committee are here, scoping out your father. It's going to be a crowded primary—"

"It'll be a goddamn free for all," Haymitch interrupted, not taking his eyes off the rest of the room as he sipped from his glass.

"A free for all," Maysilee agreed, "and we need to establish your father as the frontrunner right out of the gate so we get their support." Madge knew that 'support' was the polite euphemism for funding, which was the be all and end all of a campaign. Which also meant that those people from the national committee were probably the ones her father was talking to instead of acknowledging his daughter's existence.

"Mays," Haymitch said under his breath, eyes trained on a man standing on his own across the room. "Rickerson's free."

"Get him, tiger," Maysilee said, giving Haymitch an encouraging arm squeeze before he set off toward one of the suit-wearing unfamiliar faces. Haymitch and Maysilee were both political consultants and split their time between Washington, D.C. and the state, strategizing and fundraising and schmoozing, and making a lot of money in the process. Madge wasn't entirely sure what they did other than that Haymitch seemed to advise on a lot of campaigns and Maysilee was a whiz with fundraising and donations. Madge mostly wished they spent more time in the state so she could see them more often.

Turning back to Madge, Maysilee smiled slyly. "And who was that young man, dropping you off tonight?"

"No one." When Maysilee kept grinning at her, Madge added defensively, "He's a friend of a friend. He gave me a ride."

"Any potential...?"

"No." Madge was adamant.

Maysilee smiled again and took a sip of wine as she watched Madge. "You sure? Some of us go for the tall, dark, handsome, and surly type." She glanced over her shoulder to check on Haymitch's progress with Mr. Important Whoever.

Madge grimaced, which caused Maysilee to laugh. "Well, he made quite an impression on your mom. I haven't seen her that angry since... well, it was probably a couple of days ago, when the caterers for tonight's dinner backed out because of a double-booking. But they really put her in a bind. It's tough to get decent caterers on short notice at this time of year."

"Mom was terrible," Madge said darkly. "She was so rude to him." She explained about her mother trying to make Gale take way more than what Madge actually owed him for gas money, just to rub it in how much wealthier the Undersees were than he was. As if he needed any reminders.

To Madge's surprise, Maysilee didn't share Madge's outrage. She listened carefully to Madge's account and then said, "She may have been testing him."

"What?"

"You know how overprotective she is, hon. She'd keep you locked in a tower like Rapunzel if she could. What if she was worried about this boy being interested in you for the wrong reasons—like money, or your father's position—and was testing him?"

"That doesn't excuse it. _If_ that's even what she was doing, which I doubt. And anyway, he's not interested in me. He hates me. Well, at least, he doesn't like me. _Because_ we have money and because of Dad, not the other way around."

Maysilee eyed Madge skeptically. "I'm not saying I agree with whatever mindgame your mom might have been playing with him, but from what I could see through the window you guys looked awfully friendly."

Madge didn't have a chance to set her aunt straight about it all being an act because she noticed her father finally making his way across the room to her. He was smiling broadly and held his arms open for a hug. "Welcome home, Pumpkin, we missed you."

Madge squeaked as he crushed her in a bear hug. He was always good for a hug, when she could catch him.

"Finals go well?" he asked when he released her.

Madge made a noncommittal noise. "I don't have my grades yet. I have no idea." Actually, she did have an idea and she wasn't optimistic. Her plan for now was to hope that the grades wouldn't be available until she went back to school, and that her parents would be too preoccupied with the campaign to remember to ask her again. Ideally they would just assume her grades were good, as usual.

"And the car? Your mother says we'll need to get it repaired?"

She nodded and braced herself for a scolding, but her father was distracted by the entrance of the catering team, who announced that dinner was ready. Her father exchanged a glance with Maysilee and it was like flipping a switch: they both shifted into networking mode, using the excuse to usher guests to the dining table as an opportunity to get in a few extra exchanges with people who were clearly more important than Madge. Whatever else her father might have wanted to talk about with her—like perhaps: his impending run for office and the effect it would have on their family—was forgotten.

Madge noted sourly that she was seated next to her mother. She had been hoping to take refuge at the far end of the table with her father's assistant Ruth Ann, who at least had a sense of humor, or near Haymitch and Maysilee who always had entertaining, and occasionally bawdy, stories. But apparently the image of familial solidarity trumped entertainment on a night like this and Madge had to be near her parents. Fortunately, when Madge took her seat her mother was busy conferring with the catering manager, so she was spared any further criticisms about her tardiness or clothes.

The person on her other side was the so-called secret weapon, Kevin, whom Haymitch had pointed out earlier. He promptly introduced himself and flashed his toothpaste advertisement smile at Madge, while extracting all the standard introductory information from her: where she went to school, her class year, and her major. She had to bite her tongue from asking if he also wanted her name, rank, and serial number.

"Music major, huh?" he asked, unfolding his napkin and placing it in his lap. He looked at her when he asked, but his eyes immediately slid over everyone else in the room, keeping tabs on other people's interactions. That half-attention maneuver was one of the things that most infuriated Madge about these types of events. Everyone was always on the lookout for someone more important to talk to. The important person was never Madge—why would it be? she was just "the daughter"—and made her feel like she would be better off just not attending. She'd rather be invisible by herself in her room than invisible while surrounded by all these people.

"Not going into the family business, then?" Kevin asked.

Madge shook her head, assuming he meant politics since most people didn't know or care about her mother's sidelined career. "What about you?" she forced herself to ask, to play her designated role. "Where did you go to school? How did you get into all this?"

He rattled off his resume, most of which she could have guessed: Ivy League, internships with senators allied with their state, several campaigns, grad school, more campaigns... Madge asked all the right follow-up questions about his experiences, relieved that prompting him to talk about himself qualified as polite conversation and that it was so easy to do. Getting other people to talk was her main coping mechanism for enduring political gatherings. And then fortunately the salads were served and Kevin was drawn into a conversation with the person on his other side, leaving Madge free to eat in peace and to observe the other guests at the table. The only disruptions to her observations were the occasional whispered admonishments from her mother to sit up straight.

After the soup course, Madge's father stood and clinked his fork against his wine glass, signaling that it was time to discuss the campaign. Madge sighed heavily and looked longingly at her mother's glass of white wine, barely noticeable lipstick imprints kissing the rim.

"Madge," her mother warned in a low tone.

Madge frowned at her bowl. She couldn't even _sigh_ without being reprimanded? But she knew there would be no further warnings; her mother would never cause a scene and they both knew that Madge would limit her outward signs of frustration going forward. Madge quietly set her spoon down and turned her attention to her father.

He was in campaign mode already. Energetic, articulate, idealistic... They needed to turn the state around, starting with the economy and bringing more jobs to the hardworking citizens... Same stuff Madge had heard a million times before. She half-listened, her mind wandering back over the past two very strange days. First there had been Dirtbag Greg ruining her last night at school and her hopes of escaping from her house over the break. She couldn't very well go visit him or watch any of his band's gigs if they'd broken up and she wanted him to crawl off into a hole somewhere and get eaten alive by a snake. For example. She had several other ideas of ways he should suffer.

She wasn't ready yet to think about her own role in what she'd started mentally referring to as the Greg Fiasco.

And then there was her odd drive home with Gale Hawthorne. He'd always made it clear that he didn't like her, though she hadn't known that her father's sale of his stake in the mine near Twelve Springs had anything to do with it. She barely even remembered Gale from when her family still lived in Twelve; he'd gone to the other elementary and middle school and Madge had moved away before high school, which was when he and Katniss became friends. They were the fastest runners in the school, even as freshmen, and trained together on the track and cross-country teams. Madge would see him occasionally at Katniss's birthday parties (when Katniss could be convinced to celebrate her birthday). She'd tried to be nice to him but he certainly wasn't interested in being friendly back, so she gave up and they settled into a pattern of bare civility when Katniss was present and outright hostility when she wasn't. He was always ready with a crack that fit with his image of Madge as a "poor little rich girl" no matter what she did to prove that she was perfectly pleasant. Then after he hurt his knee and lost his scholarship to the university, he'd gotten even worse. She'd been selfishly relieved to hear he was taking a year off before enrolling.

What had he been up to, with those flowers for Katniss? Was he going to make some kind of move? Katniss had always sworn that they friends and nothing more, and Madge doubted anything in the first semester of college had changed Katniss's mind about that. In fact, Madge suspected that Katniss was starting to get interested in dating at school—she wasn't as hard to convince to get out of the room when Madge mentioned Peeta would be wherever they were going...

"And Madge, that brings me to how you can help."

Madge looked up. Her father had reached the part of his speech where he described everyone's role. She turned the corners of her mouth up incrementally, acknowledging that she was listening.

"We'll try to schedule your appearances on weekends, to not interfere with your academic schedule, though you might want to take fewer credits this semester to keep your GPA up. My scheduler can work with you to find events that interest you."

Madge stared at him. Take fewer classes? That could delay her graduation or mean summer term to catch up. And he wouldn't even be talking to her himself—his scheduler was going to manage his relationship with her?

"But your real task," her father continued, "will be increasing our presence on campus. Starting a student group, organizing voter drives, that sort of thing. We'd really like to a grass roots group."

Her father was wearing a wide smile that suggested he could imagine no other outcome than Madge saying, "Absolutely, Daddy, you can count on me!" Madge herself could imagine no response other than, "Absolutely not!" but saying that in front of all the campaign staff and these national party reps was out of the question. In desperation, Madge looked to Haymitch to see if he was on board with these terrible ideas.

Haymitch noticed her distress and leaned forward in his seat on the other side of the table, as though he and Madge were having a private conversation. "We have the edge with name recognition and appeal with your generation, but we need them to actually vote," he explained. "This thing will be locked up during the primary, which is right after your spring finals. Getting to the students this spring is crucial."

Madge sat up straighter but paused, not sure where to start and wary of saying anything that could seem unsupportive. But everyone seemed to be waiting for her to respond.

"I don't think..." she said, but got tangled in how to put her concern delicately. She tried again. "I'm his daughter. I don't know how convincing it would be for me to start a grass roots group. I could see people criticizing it as... contrived."

Haymitch nodded. "That's why you'll have to be subtle. Talk up the campaign during student council meetings, make suggestions to clubs with missions that align with our policies, encourage people to volunteer, remind them it looks good on resumes."

"I don't really hang around with the student government types," Madge said. It felt like a rejection of her heritage, but honestly: those people were obnoxious. They were mostly clones of this Kevin guy she was sitting next to. "I'm in the music school," she explained defensively, ostensibly for the benefit of everyone who didn't know much about her, but to remind her parents too. She wasn't their little wind-up campaign puppet. "So I spend more time with arts students."

"Well," her father said with a smile, jumping in to end the exchange, "arts students vote, too. We'll figure something out, Madge. Just brainstorming at the moment. Now, everyone, as far as the formal announcement itself, Shelley and I would like to make it at our holiday party next week. Shel, you want to run through the game plan?"

Madge's mother smiled broadly at the room and opened a leather portfolio resting near her plate. "Thank you, Bruce. And thank you, all, for joining us tonight."

Mrs. Undersee launched into a detailed description of the media who had been invited to the party, the talking points for people to hit if interviewed, and potential donors to talk up. Madge sat back slightly in her chair, aware that her role at the holiday party was to pose for pictures with her parents and to personify the image of an enthusiastic, supportive daughter. Her mother fit her own role—capable, engaging spouse—perfectly, performing impressively for the national reps. Madge noticed two of them nodding along and exchanging glances, confirming her suspicion that tonight was an audition of sorts. No wonder her mother was so tightly wound about everything going perfectly. With a sinking feeling, Madge realized that the holiday party would be even worse.

The caterers brought the main course out from the kitchen as Mrs. Undersee wrapped up her remarks, and Madge felt herself brightening at the prospect of the dinner being that much closer to concluding. After brief reports from Maysilee on the campaign's current funds and from Haymitch on potential endorsements from bigger name politicians, the dinner guests relaxed into bubbles of side conversations around the table. Madge looked down at her filet mignon and starting plotting how quickly she could escape after dessert.

"Madge," her mother said, turning to her as she consulted a list of names in her folder, "Will your new friend—that boy with the filthy truck—be joining us at the party? Instead of this Greg you mentioned?"

"His name is Gale," Madge corrected. She hated it when her mother avoided using someone's name that she very well knew, just as a way to condescend. Nobody was better at remembering names than her parents. "And why would he come to the party, after the way you just treated him?"

Mrs. Undersee raised her eyebrows as though she had no idea what Madge was talking about, and then apparently decided to ignore the accusation and asked, "But Greg is _not_ coming?"

"Right."

Her mother smoothly drew a line through Greg's name on the list without looking up. Madge couldn't help but feel hurt. The abrupt disappearance of a boyfriend her daughter had mentioned introducing to her parents over the holidays was apparently no more than a blip on her mother's event planning agenda. Daughter possibly upset? Who cares, let's focus on the headcount for the party!

Madge also wished _she_ could cut Greg out of her life with one swift pen stroke. She was dreading turning on her phone again, and having to wade through his bombardment of messages. At least she could be sure he'd quit bugging her as soon as he got home.

"Darling," Mrs. Undersee continued, "I doubt your truck friend—"

" _Gale_."

Mrs. Undersee didn't react. "I doubt he would enjoy himself, dear. And I would rather you focus on supporting your father during the party."

Knowing that her mother didn't want Gale at the party made Madge want to invite him. Badly. She'd love to see her mother's reaction to Gale lurking around the Undersees' house, glaring at the guests, not playing nice. Then Madge remembered that he would laugh in her face if she asked him to attend something like her family's holiday party, or really, to spend any time with her voluntarily.

"I wouldn't want him to feel uncomfortable if he doesn't have something suitable to wear," Madge's mother added.

"How considerate," Madge said icily.

Once again Mrs. Undersee ignored her daughter's hostility. "You know, you don't need a date, dear. You'll be busy and you don't need to babysit someone who may not be used to... these sorts of gatherings. The boy is from a mining family, isn't he? He may not have the right social graces. I'd hate for there to be a scene on such an important night for your father."

"How can you jump to the assumption that he'd cause a _scene_ just because—"

" _Madge_ ," Mrs. Undersee said in her no-nonsense tone, casting a _stop this_ look at her daughter.

Madge realized she was the one who'd been causing a scene, or about to, and scowled at the table while her mother turned her attention back to the attendees list for the party. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Kevin glancing at her with a questioning expression, but she ignored him too. Why did five minutes of talking with her mother leave her feeling like a kid who'd had a tantrum? How was she going to get through the holiday party, let alone the campaign?


	5. Hanging with the Hawthornes

Upon walking in the front door of his house, Gale was assaulted by two kids, one German Shepherd mix, and the warm aroma of his favorite chicken casserole. Trixie's barks drowned out the competing voices of Posy and Vick, who had both launched themselves at him and then almost as quickly began debating which of them had won their bet estimating his exact arrival time. Rory, who'd initially hung back, pushed Posy and Vick out of the way to hug Gale himself, and then rolled his eyes in an attempt to convey that he was above Posy and Vick's childish antics. Gale's own eyes zeroed in on Rory's feet to check if his brother was wearing platform shoes, or if the kid really had grown that much taller.

"Trix. Down." Rory gestured for the dog to stop leaping up on Gale, who honestly didn't mind. He'd missed her and her jumping, too. Trixie reluctantly put all four paws on the ground, but then wriggled and whimpered to ensure they knew that even though she was obeying, she wasn't happy about it.

"Where's Ma?" Gale asked as he scratched Trixie behind her ears and dropped his bags on the floor.

"Sudsy's," Rory said, naming the laundromat where their mother worked. "She's picking up extra shifts since school's on winter break." Their mother also worked as a teacher's aide at Posy's elementary school on weekdays.

"She'll be back soon," Posy reported, and then ran over to the kitchen table and held up the timer. "And when this goes ding, dinner will be ready. Rory's in charge of touching the oven."

Rory started explaining how their mom had made the casserole in advance and told him when to put it in the oven, but before he could finish talking Vick interrupted, spitting his question out as though it had been gnawing at him.

"Gale are you going to make Rory move back into my room while you're here?"

Gale groaned. He'd completely forgotten that Rory had moved into his room when he left. He started walking down the hallway to the stairs to the basement. It wasn't a bedroom as much as a glorified laundry room, but it was his. Or had been before he'd left.

"Where's my bed? Is it still down here?"

"It's my bed now," Rory said, following him down the stairs. "You can sleep in my old bed in Vick's room."

"That one's too short. I need my own bed."

"But all my stuff is down here now!" Rory protested. "I don't want to have to go back and forth!"

"Gale, I think Rory's old bed in my room is long enough for you," Vick said hopefully. Gale knew he just didn't want to share with Rory again. They were only two years apart and fought more than any of the others, but since Rory was older and bigger, Vick usually lost. "I don't mind sharing with you."

"All my clothes are down here," Rory said as they reached the basement. "And my books! What if I need to read something?"

Gale flicked down one of Rory's books on the shelf. The top edge of the book was coated with a thick layer of dust. "You haven't touched these since you moved down here."

"I might!"

"I'm willing to take that risk," Gale said, flopping onto the unmade bed. The good old noisy pipes he remembered were still visible, criss-crossing the ceiling.

"Get off!"

"Fine." Gale stood up and started pulling Rory's sheets off the bed. Gale didn't have high standards, but he knew better than to expect anything other than the worst from a 13-year old boy. Seconds later, Rory tackled him. Rory was stronger than Gale remembered, but still just a minor hindrance.

"Leave Gale alone, Rory!" Vick called, trying to pull Rory off Gale and, of course, getting socked by Rory in the process. That spurred Vick to swipe back at Rory, and soon they were wrestling on the basement's concrete floor. Gale used his foot to nudge them back onto the shaggy, army green rug and observed briefly that Vick was getting to be a closer match for Rory lately. Their fight could go on for a while. Then he turned his attention back to purging his bed of Rory's sheets, but found that Posy and Trixie had leapt onto it. Posy was kicking her shoes delightedly on the mattress and rolling back and forth in the partially removed bedclothes, giggling, while Trixie barked happily. Gale tugged on the sheets, yanking Posy along the length of the bed, which made her laugh harder. Getting in people's way as they made, or unmade, their beds was one of her hobbies. Laughing himself, Gale lobbed Rory's pillow at her.

"Gale? Are you home? Is everyone down here?"

Their mother's voice traveled down the stairwell and Gale could hear her footsteps causing the floorboards to creak overhead. Rory and Vick paused in their wrestling match to listen. Trixie also froze and then barked excitedly.

"We're down here, Mama!" Posy called. "Gale's home!"

Gale shooed Posy and Trixie off the bed while Vick and Rory stood up and tried to straighten their clothes. By the time Hazelle appeared at the bottom of the stairs, Gale had dusted his own clothes off and was crossing the room to give her a hug.

She felt thinner and more brittle than he remembered. Shorter, too, if that was possible. A few more gray strands lined her dark hair, pulled back into a simple long ponytail. She was still wearing her yellow Sudsy Sae's shirt and smelled like fabric softener, the way she always did when she got home from a shift.

"It is so good to have you home again," Hazelle said as she finally pulled away. To Gale's embarrassment, she wiped her eyes. Ever since losing their father, the littlest things made her weepy. But she wasn't by nature overly sentimental, so Gale wasn't surprised when her gaze shifted to the others and she took in the scene with a wry expression.

"Anybody hurt?" she asked.

Rory and Vick shook their heads sheepishly. But then Rory's jaw tightened and he said, "This is my room now, I shouldn't have to move out—"

"No," Hazelle said, "but because you're a considerate young man and recognize that this is the only mattress long enough for your brother and that he's only home for a short period of time, I know you'll do the right thing. _Without_ a lot of huffing or smart remarks."

Rory frowned, contemplating his options, while Gale bit his lower lip to keep from smiling. Rory didn't have any options; he'd lost and he knew it. He glared at Gale. "Don't mess with my stuff."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"And I can come down here _whenever_ I want to get _whatever_ I want."

Gale smiled and tousled Rory's hair. "'Course." There was no such thing as privacy in their house anyway. Rory ducked and twisted, punching Gale's arm outside of their mother's line of sight. Fair enough. Gale knew he was provoking Rory, but he'd missed the little bugger.

"Rory," Hazelle said in a warning tone. Maybe she had actually seen the punch. In a softer tone she asked, "Is the casserole done?"

Rory paused and then bolted up the stairs. Everyone else followed and found him pulling the dish out of the oven with worried expression on his face. "I think the timer only went off a few minutes ago. We didn't hear it downstairs..."

Hazelle removed the foil cover from the dish and poked its contents with a fork. "It's perfect. Thanks, hon." She kissed Rory's head, provoking a predictable grimace which she ignored as she turned to Vick and Posy. "Did you set the table yet?"

Vick opened his mouth to make an excuse, but then quickly shut it again and pulled over the footstool so he could help Posy wash her hands at the sink. Gale watched as they pulled utensils out of the drawers, and then he jumped in to grab the plates and glasses from the cupboard, eager to slide back into family life.

He was cautiously relieved that the kids seemed to not be giving their mother a hard time, perhaps sensing her weariness in the same way that Gale had, even from just being home for a few minutes. The bags under her eyes were heavier than he remembered, and he wondered just how many extra shifts she was putting in at the laundromat. Neither of her jobs paid much, and since Rory was old enough to baby-sit, Gale wouldn't be surprised if she was taking shifts after finishing her days at the elementary school. He also wouldn't put it past her to keep something like that from him, not wanting him to worry while he was so far away.

As they got dinner on the table and started eating, Hazelle asked Gale about the drive across the country. He tried to think of interesting things to recount, especially when he saw how closely everyone was listening. The other kids had never gone more than a few hundred miles on their family driving trips before their father had died, and it made him want to take them somewhere. Come to think of it, Posy had probably never been outside of the state. Their father had been too sick toward the end to venture very far from home, and she was too young to remember going anywhere as a baby.

Everyone asked a lot of questions about North Dakota, too, and he tried to come up with fun stories. Talking about the long hours and constant battles with both equipment and weather weren't very entertaining. And he definitely didn't talk about any of the accidents; his mother was already paranoid enough about the dangers of working in the oil fields. She was acutely aware of how dangerous mining could be, and the fact that Gale was engaged in a different type of mining, half-way across the country wasn't exactly comforting to her. She knew better than anyone that being nearby and using traditional mining techniques weren't any assurance of safety. When Thom had called last spring and said he could get Gale a job on his crew, she had refused to even consider the option initially, saying he'd be better off joining the army if he wanted help paying for college. But Gale didn't want the service commitment the military would require—if he were working, he could call the shots about when he'd saved enough and wanted to quit. The money was also phenomenally better. To Gale, it had been an easy decision. Eventually he'd convinced his mother.

After dinner, they all piled into the living room to watch one of Posy's movies—under Rory and Vick's vocal protests at Posy getting to pick the movie—though Gale noticed that they didn't suggest turning it off when Posy fell asleep on Gale's lap. He suspected that, like him, they just wanted to soak in a little more time doing something as a family.

When the movie ended, he deposited Posy in her tiny bed in her tiny bedroom—a closet-like room his dad had called "the office" before she'd been born—and, even though he was exhausted from the drive, he stayed up a little later with Rory and Vick, playing video games on the Hawthornes' ancient console. It was the best way for Gale to get them to talk about their lives and school without seeming like a grownup fishing for information. He didn't really want to think of himself that way, but he did want to know what was happening at home and neither of them were much better than he was about talking on the phone. Vick seemed to be generally all right, but Gale learned (through Vick, of course) that Rory had been getting in trouble for fighting at school.

"There's a jerk in my class," Rory said defensively in response to Gale's question about how the fight started. "He picks on the smaller kids. I'm taller than him now, so..."

"Just be sure _you_ don't become the jerk," Gale cautioned. "And, don't get caught fighting," he added as an afterthought. He wasn't going to tell Rory not to fight—it was best to learn when you were young how to handle yourself in a real fight against non-siblings—though he was sure his mom would disapprove of fighting in general. Not getting caught sounded like a good compromise. What their mom didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

"You babysitting these guys much?" Gale asked Rory.

"He's not babysitting me," Vick corrected. "He's just in charge of Posy sometimes. _Not me_."

"Got it," Gale said seriously, swallowing the urge to grin. Heaven forbid Rory have any official authority over Vick. Gale felt grateful that he'd never had to deal with these power struggles when _he_ babysat. It never even occurred to Posy that Gale wouldn't be in charge, and Rory and Vick knew better than to cross him.

To Rory he asked, "So how often do you watch Posy? How late?"

Rory shrugged. "Just a few days a week. Ma's usually home by bedtime."

"Yours? Or Posy's?"

"Depends," Rory said vaguely, probably sensing that Gale wouldn't like the answer. Gale didn't push it, having already heard enough to make him feel guiltier than he'd have thought possible. Gale used to be the one watching the kids on weekends or when his mother picked up an after-dinner shift. But judging from how badly Rory and Vick were beating Gale at the video game they were all playing, he suspected his mother was working more than she'd let on during their phone calls. When she was home, she was a real hard-ass about not turning on the game console until they were done with homework.

Eventually, Rory and Vick gave up resisting sleep and shoved each other down the hallway to Vick's bedroom. On his way to the basement, Gale noticed a dim light in the kitchen and wandered in to shut it off, only to discover his mother at the table, wearing her threadbare red robe and surrounded by a familiar assortment of court filings, medical reports, and hospital bills.

"You said you were going to bed," he said, a hint of accusation in his tone.

She looked up and he thought saw a glimmer of regret cross her face. "Couldn't sleep," she said simply.

"Did something new happen?" he asked, surveying the table. "In Dad's case?"

He remembered countless times during high school when he would find her hunched over this same table with these same papers late at night when the younger kids were asleep. She didn't want to upset or confuse them, and he suspected she didn't want him to know how much time she spent on the case, either. Rightly so, he thought: the quest to get the mining company to pay the benefits it owed their father, or at least some of his medical bills for the illness they caused, was hopeless and she was already wearing herself ragged between her two jobs and the kids. They'd lost the first stage of the case, then they lost the appeal, and they'd lose the next appeal until they ran out of appeals or gave up. The system was designed for the miners to lose, and he didn't see how this particular fight would change any of that.

"No, nothing new," she finally said. "Still waiting for the judge to decide if we had enough proof."

"How long does it fucking take and what more could we possibly have?"

" _Gale._ _Language._ This house is not your rig."

"Sorry," he said sharply. All right, maybe his mother was right to not want to remind him of the case. He couldn't even think about it without wanting to deck someone. Preferably the soulless bastards who ran the company that killed his father, although honestly they deserved much worse than a punch. What he really wanted was to make those cowards, hiding away in their offices in far-off cities, denying all the claims and bills, to actually inhale as much coal dust as his father had over the years and feel what it was like to have your lungs give out on you. Then maybe they'd believe what his father had gone through and stop saying he'd just succumbed to a nasty pneumonia.

His mother started pushing the papers back into their various folders. "I was just going over all the reports again to make sure I didn't miss something." She looked up at him. "I'd let you know the second there was a decision one way or the other. You know that, honey."

"I know." He hesitated for a moment and then asked, "Do you need help?"

She shook her head and went back to putting the papers away. "There isn't anything to do about the case. Just wait." She placed all the folders in a pile on the edge of the table. "But," she said, "there is one thing I would like you to do."

"Yeah?"

She pulled one battered folder forward and pushed it toward him.

Gale warily opened it. When he saw the form, he stiffened. "No."

"It's just the financial aid form. You've been putting this off for too long and goodness knows you won't deal with it when you go back to North Dakota."

"I'm not taking any loans. And neither are you."

Hazelle sighed in exasperation. "One of those is not your decision, hon."

"Dad wouldn't have wanted—"

"Gale—" She started to say something and stopped. They'd had this argument so many times she didn't seem interested in rehashing all the points they each made. His mother opened up another folder to look at some handwritten notes she'd made. "The financial aid lady I talked to said grants and scholarships were possible. That means no loans. You have to send in this form first, though."

He shook his head. He'd also talked to the financial aid office. He stopped by when he'd been on campus to see what he'd need to do to enroll after deferring, and how his financial aid package might be different now. The answer was: it was even worse. Of course. Why had he tempted fate by thinking he could possibly get any kind of break?

To his mother, he explained: "They'll give me even less than last year because of what I'm making now. They'll say I can pay full tuition, and I can't. Yet." Because he was still paying off his knee-related bills at Valley General, which their family's crappy insurance had only barely helped with and which he refused to let his mother contribute to when she was already behind on the house payments. That was another sore point with Hazelle, but she didn't have a lot of options. She had to deal with his father's lingering medical bills on top of everything else. Gale tried to make his voice sound confident as he said, "But in a few years I'll have enough saved."

His mother frowned. "You said one year."

That's what he'd hoped, but he was quickly learning that what he wanted and what the world delivered seldom aligned. No need to belabor that with his mother, though, since she knew that lesson better than anyone.

"Look, Ma," he said in a reassuring tone, "I'll get there. I might take some detours on the way, but nobody in this family is going into any more debt because of me."

Her shoulders slumped. "Gale, your father and I... This isn't how we planned—"

"I know," he said quietly. None of them planned on losing his father to black lung, or fighting with the hospitals and lawyers about it for so many years. His mother looked so overwhelmed with her messy folders of forms and notes, he moved over to hug her. "Don't worry about me." She had enough to worry about; she didn't need to add his schooling timeline to the list.

She laughed lightly. "Not possible. You're my baby." She released him and gave in to an overpowering yawn. Smiling weakly, she said, "I know. 'Get some sleep.'"

"You working tomorrow, too?" he asked with a frown.

She nodded as she stood up and located her slippers. "Sae's visiting her daughter in Florida. She needs help and I can use the hours."

"You know, Ma, I can help more—"

"No," she said quickly. More gently, she added, "You send too much already. And I appreciate it, I do—I'm caught up on the mortgage now, thank God—but you're the child and I'm the parent. Save for school. That's what you can do to help, hon."

Gale didn't agree, but he didn't want to start a debate about it when his mother so desperately needed to get some rest. "I'll take the kids out tomorrow," he said, one thing he could do to help that she would allow. "To the forest so we can cut down a Christmas tree." It was an annual tradition, which they'd unfortunately missed last year because of Gale's knee blow-out. He was determined to keep the tradition alive, one of his favorite memories with their father back when he was healthy enough to go.

Hazelle smiled. "They'll like that. We can decorate it when you all get home." She started to walk to her room and then paused, looking back. "Have you seen Katniss yet?"

Gale shook his head. "Missed her. She'll be back in a few days, though."

"Tell her we follow all the news about her meets at the school. Mrs. Larson's kindergarteners are her biggest fans."

He laughed lightly as she shuffled away, not doubting in the slightest that Posy and his mom had turned the class into Katniss's personal cheering squad. His hand traveled unconsciously to his pocket to check his phone on the off chance that Katniss was able to get reception wherever she was and had called again. But there were no new messages. He just needed to be patient. He'd see her soon.


	6. Reunion with Katniss

Gale finally saw Katniss a couple of days later. He spotted her the second he opened the door to the mall on the highway outside of Twelve Springs. She was sitting at their usual table in the smoothie place, fiddling with her phone, two jumbo size cups in front of her. Her hair was in its standard braid and she was wearing a dark blue warm-up jacket with the university's logo on it. When she saw him, she leapt to her feet and met him at the shop's entrance with a crushing hug. He squeezed her back, which felt right but unfamiliar. They hadn't really been hugging friends.

Katniss pulled back and beamed at him, studying his face. He smiled—his real smile, which hadn't gotten much use over the past few months—and moved to slide into his seat at their table. Katniss sat down across from him and nudged one of the cups toward him.

He lifted the lid for a peek. "The usual?"

"'Course."

He took a sip from the straw, the sweet strawberry blend of his favorite smoothie a welcome reminder of their last two years of high school. Their coach had helped get them jobs at the athletic supply store in the mall, and they'd worked out a barter system with the kids at the smoothie place for cheap, frequent smoothies. Whenever he was working and Katniss had a break or a day off and happened to be nearby, she'd bring him a smoothie and he'd do the same for her during her shifts. They were logging so many miles at that point that it seemed like they were always hungry.

"I can't believe you're really here," Katniss said, staring at him. A cloud passed over her face. "Sorry I had to change plans at the last minute."

"It's fine," he said, waving off her concern. Now that he was seeing her in person, his plan to profess his feelings for her in her dorm room seemed like even more of a terrible idea. He blamed the out of whack male:female ratio in North Dakota for warping his judgment. A confession like that was something you warmed up to, not sprung on someone. Especially after not having seen them for so long.

"That was good of you to help out Madge," Katniss continued. "And she said you didn't kill each other. See, I always knew if you gave her a chance—"

He cut her off with a sour expression. He and Madge were not going to become best friends just because they were each friends with Katniss. "What's your big news?" he asked, switching topics. When they'd arranged to meet for smoothies, she'd said she had something big to tell him.

Katniss smiled hesitantly. "That retreat I was just on? It was for the team to plan for the upcoming season and... Coach says I have a shot at qualifying for the Olympic time trials next summer. He's going to set up a special program for me."

"The time trials?" Gale had been following Katniss's times and knew she was getting even faster, which wasn't surprising now that she had a professional coach at the university rather than their high school trig teacher. But he hadn't known she was close to qualifying for the time trials.

"I don't think I'll actually _make_ the Olympic team," Katniss said quickly. "My times aren't quite there, but still, to even get to go... Well, who'd have thought?"

"A lot of us," Gale supplied, his face breaking into a satisfied smile. He had the urge to throw a big fat _I told you so_ in someone's face—but everyone he knew had always been impressed with Katniss's speed as well. She'd won the state's 5k cross-country championship all four years in high school, and always cleaned house in whatever track events she entered, too. At least one thing in this world was working out how it should.

Katniss looked as uncomfortable as ever with the compliment and kept talking as though Gale hadn't said anything. "Coach is getting other students involved, so it won't just be me." She explained how some communications majors were going to make a short documentary about training for the Olympic time trials, and how business students were going to work with the group on sports marketing. They would all get academic credit for the project. Wrinkling her nose, Katniss added, "Which means we also have to write papers and meet with professors... But it'll be better than sitting through Astronomy 101 or another Econ class."

"And you're cool with the documentary thing?" Gale asked as he took another sip of his smoothie. The Katniss he remembered went out of her way to avoid the spotlight, even hiding from their high school newspaper's sports reporters at meets.

Katniss bit her lip. "If I do qualify, the national team needs to attract sponsors. There isn't much money in track and field. Any edge helps. And if I don't make it this year, I guess I should be thinking about _building buzz_ if I get another shot." She said building buzz as though the words tasted bad; it was obvious they'd come from someone else.

But Gale understood what she was saying: everything came back to money, didn't it? That's why he'd left everything he knew for North Dakota. It was why his mother couldn't catch a break. But here Katniss was, getting the chance she had rightfully earned.

He sat forward and reached for Katniss's hand. "I think it sounds like an amazing opportunity," he said seriously. "You deserve it."

Katniss colored and glanced down at their hands. She pulled hers away and reached for her smoothie, taking a long gulp from her straw and not making eye contact with him. All the air between them felt like it had suddenly been sucked away.

Gale immediately reached for his own smoothie, kicking himself for acting on the impulse but trying not to let on that he was bothered that it hadn't gone well. Too much too soon? Katniss had scorned all dating during high school, saying she didn't have time between her training schedule, working, and keeping her grades up in case an athletic scholarship didn't come through. Part of why she and Gale were friends was because he had a similar agenda—with a few key modifications, most importantly being that he didn't forgo dating and didn't put as much focus on grades. He was also the only person on the team fast enough to train with her. They both had been determined to run their way out of Twelve, despite the odds being stacked against them.

"So... what's going on with you?" Katniss asked when the silence between them had grown unbearable. It was probably only a few seconds but to Gale it felt like minutes. "Did you talk to the Men's coach when you were on campus last week? Didn't he say he might renew your scholarship after you deferred?"

"No point." Now Gale was the one looking elsewhere, eyes following the shoppers strolling past them in the mall, annoying Christmas music supplying the soundtrack for their quest for gifts. Why was he even surprised that Katniss wasn't receptive to a small gesture like trying to hold her hand? She'd just told him she was about to start training for the _Olympics_. Of course she'd maintain her "no distractions" policy. He knew her. And he couldn't fault her for wanting to keep her focus on her training.

"I know the scholarship isn't a lot of money, but it could help, Gale."

He sighed and looked back at her, feeling tired. He'd gone over the numbers so many times in his own head, analyzed every angle. There wasn't a way to make it work. But Katniss was watching him expectantly, hoping she could help him. She had always been on his side; he owed it to her to try to explain.

So he did. She already knew how Men's track wasn't a moneymaker for the university and wasn't a sport they needed for recruitment, so he'd only gotten a partial scholarship. Katniss had lucked out with a full scholarship, funded by a wealthy donor who apparently really liked the Women's Track and Field team. But Katniss didn't know, and he had to explain, how it wouldn't help even if he did get the partial scholarship the coach had offered him before his knee surgery. He would be able to make more money with a part-time job, only practice and competitions would take up so much time that he wouldn't have time to work. Either way, he'd be coming up short.

"And, really," he said, "who knows if the coach would give me another scholarship. I can't run when I'm working 14-hour days on the rig." More often than not, he was so exhausted after a shift that he collapsed wherever he happened to be crashing that night. The overtime made all the extra hours worth it, and what else was he going to do in North Dakota, where he didn't know anyone other than Thom and his crewmates? He might as well work as long and hard on the rig as he could and make as much money as possible.

Katniss eyed him skeptically. "How's your knee?"

He pasted on his most neutral expression. "Fine."

"If you haven't been training, how would you know?"

"My job isn't exactly sedentary, Katniss."

She chewed on her straw, probably internally debating whether to push the issue with him. His knee was a sensitive topic for both of them. Gale, because it had derailed all his plans for the future, and Katniss because she couldn't truly understand how it felt to be side-lined during senior year, hobbling on crutches everywhere, not even able to drive on his own. She was sympathetic and did whatever she could think of to help him, but it wasn't the same.

It was kind of like how she couldn't understand about his father. Her father had also been a miner and she'd lost him after the mine closed—that was one of their uncanny similarities that cemented their friendship and their shared motivation to get scholarships—but Katniss's father was hired on at a mine two counties over and had been killed in a car accident during his long commute. She understood better than anyone else Gale knew how intensely he wanted to make things easier for his mother and brothers and sisters after losing their father—she was the same way with her own family—but she wasn't as angry as he was. Gale hadn't been able to figure out if it was because she didn't have targets to blame the way he did, or if she just reasoned in her typical, efficient Katniss way that her energy was better spent elsewhere. He had a hard time believing how anyone could have spent as much time in hospitals or in courts as his family had and not be enraged at the world.

Gale gently flexed his leg under the table, waiting for the faint twinge of pain from the tender area. Sometimes it was fine, sometimes it wasn't, and he was starting to worry he couldn't tell the difference between real pain and phantom pain.

He didn't think Katniss noticed him moving his leg; she was still frowning in concentration at the table's surface. Finally, she looked up and asked, "So what's your plan?"

He shrugged, looking around the food court. He noticed that the ice cream place had closed. One more business folding, and he suspected it wasn't only because demand for ice cream fell in the winter.

"Still figuring it out."

Katniss set her smoothie on the table and sat back in her seat. "You're going to keep working," she concluded. "You're not enrolling in the fall." When he didn't answer, she narrowed her eyes at him. "How long?"

He returned her steely gaze. She knew he wasn't taking any loans and would never give him a hard time about it. "Not sure yet," he said. "But pretty soon I'll get promoted or hired by a competing company and then I'll really rake it in. Once you know what you're doing and prove you're not a screwup, everyone wants you."

Katniss listened carefully, the way she always did. "What if you like making money so much, you don't want to go back to school?"

He understood why she wondered. They'd both worked their asses off on the team in high school so they could get a ticket to college and claw their way out of Twelve Springs, which had started its gradual death when the mine officially closed. Now here Gale was: out, and making more money than his father had ever dreamed of even when the mine had been thriving.

He shrugged again. "Wouldn't be the end of the world. But the oil fields are a boom that will eventually bust and then where will I be? North Fucking Dakota, which actually IS the end of the world." He pulled out his phone and showed her a few pictures of the landscape, even more desolate in the frosty winter conditions.

Katniss grimaced. Neither of them were fans of winter. Ice hadn't done either of them any favors in life.

"Sure doesn't look like our hills," she said.

"Nope."

Katniss passed his phone back. She studied him for a few seconds and then one side of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. "Your ma must be _all_ over you about this."

He chuckled as he nodded, appreciating again how well she knew him—and his family—so well. Was he crazy for thinking it was possible to start a relationship with Katniss when he wasn't even living in the same state as her? Maybe that was actually the one type of relationship she'd accept, since she could still spend most of her time training and focusing on the upcoming time trials. He knew he wasn't wrong about how good they were together as friends, and about how important she was to him and he to her. She'd even acknowledged it during one of their sporadic phone calls while he'd been in North Dakota. That had to mean something.

"Come on," Katniss said, standing up. "I need to get a Christmas present for Prim. She could use a new scarf."

Gale hesitated, the moment slipping away from him. But Katniss was already tossing her empty smoothie cup in the garbage and checking her phone. She was the picture of impatience, which was actually comforting in its familiarity. Katniss did not linger.

"How's Thom?" she asked when he joined her, pocketing her phone again.

"Really good, actually. Says hi to everyone." Thom had been a year ahead of them in high school, and after getting Gale a job on his rig in North Dakota, had let Gale crash with him when he'd first arrived. They were all squeezed into a too-small mobile home with too many other guys, but he'd been grateful to not have to sleep in his truck like some of the other newcomers. Housing was so expensive and in such short supply that it wasn't uncommon to see tents popping up on the outskirts of town or near drill sites.

While they shopped, Gale filled Katniss in on Thom, and Katniss shared stories about her first semester at school. It was good to have enough time for a longer conversation, instead of rushed phone chats through spotty reception or playing voice mail tag. He got to hear more about her teammates, meets, professors, and her part-time job as an athletic trainer, where she helped injured athletes. It sounded like she was even more focused on running in college than she had been in high school, though he knew from the pictures in her dorm room that Madge had occasionally been able to drag her to a party. Katniss had shunned all the high school parties he'd tried to con her into attending; he wondered what Madge's magic touch was. Would he have been able to get Katniss to loosen up if he'd been on campus too? And would he be as fixated on her now if he had a whole campus of women available to him, as opposed to the sausage fest in the oil fields?

He tested the waters by inviting Katniss to a party one of their high school classmates was having that night.

"Nah," she said.

"People are going to ask about you," Gale warned.

She shrugged and ran her hands over a white wool scarf. "I never went to their parties in high school; it would be weird to go now."

"No, it wouldn't," Gale insisted.

"They're just going to drink and re-hash old stories about high school stuff I wasn't part of."

"We could do something else," Gale offered. Not that there was much to do in Twelve Springs on a weeknight. "Grab dinner at Al's? Drive around and look at Christmas lights?"

"You should go see everyone," Katniss said, setting the scarf down and picking up a yellow one. "You were part of those stories."

Gale frowned. He felt like he and Katniss should spend more time together before he had to leave again, before they had to go back to missed phone calls and busy schedules. Katniss must have sensed his frustration, because she looked at him.

"How about we go for a run tomorrow? Like old times."

He recognized it as a peace offering, but wasn't enticed. "What's the point? You'd smoke me."

"The point is to get you out there again, not to race me."

"I'll go on my own," Gale said. He didn't need her seeing how slow he was now. It was going to be bad; he didn't even _know_ how slow he was now.

"You won't go, though," Katniss said. "In fact, I bet you haven't laced up since you left for North Dakota."

She was right, but he didn't want to admit it. Rory had made a similar comment that morning when Gale slept in instead of waking up to start the day with a run, the way he had when he'd been able-bodied. He tried to think of an excuse. Katniss could be tenacious; the trick was to divert her before she got stuck on something.

A diversion presented itself in the form of a vaguely familiar guy their age, weaving through the racks of ties and scarves. The guy was very deliberately moving toward them, but Gale couldn't quite place why he knew him.

"Katniss!" the guy called.

Katniss looked up and grew still. Then she reached up to straighten her ponytail, smoothing back the loose wisps of hair that framed her face.

"Hey," she called back, her voice higher pitched than usual. She sounded like she'd been gargling. "What are you doing here?"

The guy lit up, grinning like a fool, and that's how Gale recognized him: the blond kid in Madge's photos. The jerk who'd had his arm around Katniss. Gale felt his insides start to churn. What was his name again? Peter?

"Shopping," the guy said with a smile, not taking his eyes off hers. Katniss was grinning back at him, nervously twirling her shopping bag.

The hell? Gale had never seen her flustered by a guy before. She either ignored them, or... actually she always ignored guys other than Gale.

Only now he was the one being ignored. He cleared his throat.

"Oh!" Katniss turned to him. "Gale. This is a friend from school, Peeta Mellark. He went to high school with Madge. He lives in the state capitol."

Peeta aimed his smile at Gale and extended his hand. "Great to meet you, Gale. I've heard so much about you."

Gale let Peeta's hand dangle in the air for a few seconds before grasping it for a shake that was more like a yank, catching Peeta off balance. "Hey."

Peeta steadied himself, his smile slowly wilting as he registered that Gale was decidedly Not Friendly. Gale watched Peeta's eyes take in Gale's hostile posture and stance blocking Katniss.

But Peeta recovered quickly, shifting his attention back to Katniss, annoying smile returning. "Long time no see."

Katniss smiled shyly. "I didn't know you came to this mall."

"Sure, sometimes," Peeta said. Which Gale knew was total bullshit. If this guy lived in the state capitol, no way would he do his shopping at this crappy mall outside of Twelve Springs in the _opposite_ direction of the state capitol. Peeta basically confirmed Gale's suspicion when he told Katniss, "You said you were coming shopping here today, so I thought I'd see if I could find anything for my brothers—I still need to get their presents—and maybe run into you." He glanced at Gale uneasily. "I didn't realize you were meeting a friend, though. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's no problem," Katniss said quickly, though Gale disagreed. The kid sounded like a stalker. And he must have been who Katniss was texting at the smoothie place. What, so she offhandedly mentioned she'd be somewhere and he showed up? Katniss didn't seem to be as concerned as Gale, though, and just turned toward him to explain. "Peeta is part of that multi-media team I told you about. He gave me a ride home after our retreat. He's a marketing major, helping with the promotional stuff."

"Minoring in photography," Peeta added, as though that was crucial information that Gale cared in the slightest about. "Hey Katniss, I've got my camera in my car in case you want to take some shots here in your home environment..." He sounded like he was trying to wheedle Katniss into agreeing. Gale didn't like his flirty tone.

Katniss scrunched up her nose. "I don't think so."

Peeta laughed. "We should get some running shots outside anyway. The lighting in here is terrible."

Gale interpreted this as Peeta making more plans with Katniss again in the near future. Jerk. Katniss made a noncommittal sound, and Gale wished he knew if it was because she didn't like the idea of being photographed or because she didn't want to spend more time with this grinning idiot. He had a sinking feeling that her hesitation was more likely due to her reluctance to be in the spotlight.

There was a lull in the conversation, and Gale could sense it teetering over into the awkward territory. He crossed his arms to absolve himself of any obligation to speak. Peeta was the one who turned up out of nowhere and interrupted Gale's time with Katniss.

"So," Peeta said, finally tearing his eyes away from Katniss and looking at Gale. "Are you the guy who gave Madge a ride home when her car broke down?"

Gale nodded curtly.

"I didn't know you were friends with her, too. You coming to her holiday party?"

"Not invited," Gale said. He shot Peeta a snide smile that would have made Mrs. Undersee proud, hoping the guy might squirm at having put his foot in his mouth by mentioning a party Gale wasn't invited to. Peeta didn't seem to know how to respond and glanced at Katniss for help.

"You should come with me, Gale," she said. "Madge's mom told me to bring friends this year."

"So you don't need a ride?" Peeta asked Katniss. "I was going to offer to pick you up..."

Gale forced himself not to roll his eyes at how strongly this guy was coming on—offering to drive all the way out to Twelve Springs to take Katniss to a party that was probably only minutes from his own house? Talk about transparent. Then again, this was Katniss and chances were high that she wasn't picking up on it.

"I'm going with my mom and Prim," Katniss told Peeta. "My mom and Madge's mom are old friends. The party is a tradition for our family." Turning to Gale, she added, "Seriously, Madge's mom really wanted more people our age this year. You should come. You can be the knight in shining armor who saved Madge."

Gale couldn't stop himself from a bitter chortle at the preposterousness of Katniss's suggestion.

"It was her oil, wasn't it?" Peeta asked Gale. "In Madge's car. That light came on at least a month ago. When we went to Greg's concert in Merrittville, remember?" Peeta directed the question to Katniss, who gave a confirming nod. Turning back to Gale, he added, "The party should be even better than usual this year. Madge said they'll have live music—not just canned holiday recordings—and I know for a fact that the catering is top notch." He grinned at Katniss. "My family's doing the cookie spread. You can try some of those snickerdoodles I was telling you about at the retreat."

Gale glared at Peeta, who he was starting to realize was strikingly effective at directing Katniss's attention back to himself and their shared experiences at school. Madge's family's party sounded hellacious: a political event dressed up as a holiday party for family and friends. And he especially didn't want to help Madge's mother achieve her goal of getting large numbers of young people to attend, no doubt part of a ploy to make it look like Madge's father had the support of the youth vote. But the idea of this Peeta punk cozying up to Katniss—possibly while they were both tipsy? with mistletoe nearby? away from the stresses and obligations of school?—was even worse. If Gale went, he could keep an eye on them and see for himself what was going on. He couldn't quite believe that this smarmy, preppy-looking guy was Katniss's type. He seemed more like Madge's type.

"I'll go," Gale told Katniss, who'd returned to smiling at Peeta and took a second to process what Gale had said. When she turned back to Gale, he thought he spotted a glimmer of surprise in her expression. He also saw some curiosity, as though she knew on some level that he had ulterior motives and that she wanted to figure them out. "I'll drive us so we can stay later if Prim and your mom want to head home." He directed a Madge Undersee worthy fake smile at Peeta. "Since the party sounds so _fun_."

Peeta gave Gale a tight smile in return, apparently fully aware that Gale wasn't going to go down without a fight. It was a small victory, but Gale would take it.


	7. Are You Ready for a Party?

Madge reached for another gingerbread man and bit off his head.

"You show him," Peeta said in an amused tone. They were sampling some of the Christmas cookies the Mellarks had made for the Undersees' holiday party that night; Peeta had delivered everything in advance and stayed to visit with Madge in the kitchen. He took a bite of his own cookie and nodded at Madge. "So are you going to tell me what happened with Greg?"

Madge scowled at the tray of ginger people, wishing one of them really was Greg so she could drop him on the floor and stomp him into pieces. That also might be easier than having this conversation with Peeta, who'd never been as sold on Greg as Madge had. Madge just hadn't wanted to hear it.

But it wasn't like she wouldn't eventually tell Peeta. With a sigh, she realized she might as well get it over with, like pulling off a band-aid.

"We went out for dinner to celebrate the end of finals," she started, reluctantly. "To that new Italian restaurant on Turner Avenue."

"Oh, that place looks good. Did you like it?"

"Well, it's kind of ruined for me now," Madge said with a frown, reminding Peeta to listen. He took another bite of his cookie so she could continue. "I wanted to talk about which of his shows I could see during the break, and whether he could come to this party." She nodded toward the rest of her house, which looked like the victim of a Christmas explosion. Madge's mother would have _hated_ Greg, but not been able to do anything about it because his parents owned a large chemical company in the northern part of the state and were wealthy and influential enough to be potential campaign donors. Madge had _so_ been looking forward to the introduction. But that plan was out the window now.

"So we ordered, and then he just casually said that I probably shouldn't come to any of his shows over the break and that we'd be better off keeping things between us at school."

She'd felt so stupid—he hadn't even said "our relationship," he'd said "let's just keep hanging out while we're at school." Like Madge was a part-time obligation he could forget about between semesters.

Peeta set his cookie on his plate and frowned thoughtfully. "Did he give you the 'I told you I didn't want anything serious at the beginning' line again?"

Madge nodded. He'd _said_ that, over and over again, but the thing was, he didn't act like it. They spent so much time together! He wrote songs about her, said she inspired his creativity, would turn up unexpectedly in the hallway of her dorm room to serenade her... He even publicly dedicated songs to her at his band's shows.

"Sorry, Madge," Peeta said, shaking his head. "That's not cool."

"It's worse," she added grimly. "He also said I shouldn't call or text him during the break."

Peeta winced. "Why?"

"Because his hometown girlfriend might _get the wrong idea_." She shifted her tone so Peeta would know those were Greg's words, not hers. "He said he'd probably spend a lot of time with her over the holidays so I shouldn't call him, but don't worry: we could keep _hanging out_ next semester."

Madge was glad to see that Peeta looked horrified. He also seemed too stunned to speak, which made Madge feel slightly better. If even Peeta—no fan of Greg to begin with—was this surprised that Greg had another girlfriend, she could hope that eventually she wouldn't feel like she'd been such an idiot.

"So," Peeta said slowly, "I assume you told him to go to hell?"

Madge nodded solemnly.

"In the restaurant?" he asked nervously.

"Of course not." She _was_ her mother's daughter. She'd never cause a scene in a public place, even a restaurant she'd likely never return to. She had simply pulled her napkin off her lap and walked out. She was done with Greg and that was that. Well, that was the beginning of that being that... After sorting out the restaurant bill, he'd caught up with her on her march back to campus. She hadn't needed to be concerned about causing a scene on the mostly empty quad and hadn't held back when letting him know what a sleazy, reptilian poser he was.

"We had a little chat afterward, back on campus," Madge said with exaggerated blandness.

Peeta, having known Madge all through high school, seemed to know exactly what that conversation had likely entailed. He smiled ruefully. "I almost feel bad for the guy. You can be very... articulate."

Madge was fully aware of how effectively words could be weapons and didn't feel bad in the slightest about how she'd skewered Greg. It had worked; he'd spent the next two days trying to either apologize or defend himself or both. She hadn't listened to much of it—nothing he could say would change what a dirtbag he was, or, more troublingly, why she had stayed with him as long as she did. After a few days at home, she'd finally deemed it safe to turn on her phone again and promptly deleted all of his text and voice messages without reading or listening to a single one.

"Well," Peeta said, "I say you avoid musicians next year. Those artsy types are trouble." He smiled at her over his gingerbread man as he took another bite. Madge smiled weakly in return, appreciating the mild attempt at humor—Peeta himself was a creative type, always decorating cookies, coming up with new recipes, and snapping pictures. He had even made homemade Christmas presents for her and Katniss.

"But, you know," Peeta said thoughtfully, "that really was _very_ considerate of Greg to tell you in advance that he was planning on cheating on you with the girl he'd been cheating on to be with you."

"You're right. What a stand up guy. Best ex-boyfriend ever." Madge nudged her plate farther away and slumped back in her seat. She thought she'd liked how free spirited Greg was—always going on enthusiastically about the greatest new band (that nobody else had ever heard of; if they did, he lost interest on grounds that the band had sold out), blowing off his classes to hang out with her because he 'couldn't get enough of her gorgeous eyes,' surprising her with song lyrics she'd supposedly inspired... He'd been impulsive and romantic and the complete opposite of the handful of guys she'd dated in high school who, more often than not, wanted an in with her father.

The worst part was that the very things she'd liked so much about Greg—his impulsiveness and creativity and intense emotions—had been starting to annoy her. She didn't like when he'd flake out on their plans because he'd been "so caught up with a new song idea" or when he'd start humming a new melody while she was in the middle of telling him something. She hadn't wanted to acknowledge her fading interest because she'd been counting on him helping her escape her house over the break, and to needle her mother. It didn't feel great to admit to herself that she'd been using him, or planning to, and that was part of why she wasn't as upset _about_ losing him as much as she was upset at _how_ she'd lost him. And of course, it helped fuel her anger to remember that he was a cheating bastard who'd put her in the position of being the other woman.

Peeta pushed his plate away and leaned forward. "Hey. Madge. That friend of Katniss's who moved to North Dakota—"

"Gale," she said sourly. She was already in a bad mood; she didn't want to think about Gale Hawthorne.

"Yeah, him. What's their story? I ran into him and Katniss at the mall outside Twelve Springs the other day. He... wasn't what I was expecting. The way she talked at school, they were best friends and she missed him like crazy. But he seemed kind of... mean."

"To her?"

"No. To me. He wasn't real friendly."

"Hmmmm, Peeta, I wonder why?"

Peeta swallowed. "How worried should I be?"

Madge cast her gaze around the kitchen for an excuse to avoid this conversation. The room already looked like a battle staging area, serving dishes and wine glasses neatly lined up on the counters, ready to be deployed. And this was just what her mother had set up from the Undersees' collection; the caterers hadn't even arrived yet. There were going to be more people at tonight's party than at any of her family's previous events—more eyes on her, more people scrutinizing her family and their lives.

Eventually Madge turned back to Peeta and shot him a pleading look. "Do I really have to get involved in this?"

"You could have warned me," Peeta scolded. " _Hey Peeta, there's a surly guy in town who looks like a movie star and has some deep history with Katniss_. A little head's up would have been nice."

"I didn't get any warning either. He just showed up at our dorm room looking for Katniss when you guys were at that retreat. Then he gave me a ride home when my car broke and wouldn't even talk to me. We don't exactly get along."

"What's his problem with you?"

Madge blew a frustrated breath out of her mouth so hard it hit her bangs. "Too many things to count. Not a fan of my dad, takes it out on me. Bitter about hurting his knee and losing his track scholarship, takes it out on everyone else. I think a lot of it is that he doesn't even want to share Katniss as a _friend_." She looked pointedly at Peeta. "So. You're probably not high on his list of favorite people."

With a sigh, Peeta mumbled, "Should be fun tonight." At Madge's questioning expression, he explained that Katniss had invited Gale to the Undersees' holiday party.

Great. Another reason to dread the party. She'd have to put up with an evening of not only Gale glaring at her, but her mother suspiciously watching her every interaction with him. On the other hand, from the way Peeta was griping, it sounded like Gale might be so focused on making Peeta's life miserable that he wouldn't have time to be rude to Madge. And it was possible that Madge's mother would assume Katniss and Gale were an item.

Peeta stood up suddenly. "I need to make a move," he announced to the kitchen. "I can't wait any longer. I need to... ask her out. On a date she _knows_ is a date, not just us hanging out together by coincidence at school, or like when I saw her the other day at the mall. I'm going to do it tonight."

He seemed to be trying to psych himself up, but Madge had heard this speech before, with equal vehemence from Peeta each time. She reached for a sugar cookie in the shape of a star and broke it in half before taking a bite.

"So do it already."

"No, Madge, I'm _really_ doing it tonight. I need your help."

Chewing, Madge studied him to see how serious he was. Could the threat posed by Gale be the motivation that finally pushed him into action? He looked the way he did before an important rugby match, when he really wanted to win. She thought she saw a hint of anxiousness in his eyes, too.

"What do you think I can do?" she asked skeptically.

Peeta paced between the refrigerator and the island in the center of the kitchen. "Get him away so I can talk to her."

"How? He doesn't like me."

"I don't know," Peeta said with a vague hand-wave, "show him your piano."

"My piano?" Madge couldn't stop herself from snickering. What was she going to do, breathlessly whisper into Gale's ear that she needed him to come with her away from the rest of the party so she could show him... her _piano_? It sounded like a creepy euphemism.

"What?" Peeta paused mid-pace to look at Madge.

"Did you mean for that to sound dirty?"

"No." The beginnings of a smile tugged on his lips. "But feel free to use whatever tricks might work. Think you could pull off handcuffing him to your bed?"

" _Peeta_ ," she said in a scolding tone, feeling her face flush. She hadn't meant to encourage this line of thought. She was half-horrified that her own mind had opened this door.

"Maybe you could just sick your mom on him," Peeta suggested with a smile that bubbled over into a laugh.

Normally Madge would have laughed along with him—her mother intimidated everyone, including Peeta, and Mrs. Undersee _liked_ Peeta—but Peeta's joke hit too close to home after last week's drop-off fiasco. Madge didn't want her mother anywhere near Gale, and didn't want to admit to Peeta how badly her mother had behaved. There was a huge difference between Peeta's impression of her mother as _potentially_ threatening, and Madge's recent knowledge of how _actually_ nasty her mother could be.

Before Peeta got a chance to realize that Madge wasn't entertained or why, they heard the front door of the house opening. Moments later Madge heard her mother and her aunt, their voices distinguishable because Mrs. Undersee usually spoke in a calm, deliberate tone while Maysilee tended to be more clipped and upbeat. Their voices faded, though, so Madge moved to open the kitchen door and greet them. She saw them standing in the hall like two matching blond trees growing up from a lawn of shopping bags. Madge's mother was digging through her purse while Maysilee frowned and spoke quietly. Then, in perfect synchrony, they both turned to look at Madge at the same time, even though Madge hadn't made any movements or noise to attract their attention. Their faces wore identical expressions of surprise.

Maysilee recovered first. "Hi, Madge," she called brightly, stooping to collect some of the bags, conversation with her sister abruptly over. "You seen Haymitch?"

"In Dad's study." The study was serving as campaign headquarters until they could sign the lease on office space downtown after the holidays. Madge kept her eyes on her mother, who closed her purse, collected the rest of the bags, and started walking up the stairs to the second floor, all without looking directly at her daughter.

"Great. We need to make a few calls, but holler if you need us." Maysilee's tone was light, but she spoke pointedly to Madge as she followed her sister up the staircase. Madge watched them, her anxiety increasing with each step they took. If her mother got one of her migraines today of all days, after all the planning her parents had done... Madge didn't want to think about it. The best course of action was what her mother was already doing: retreating to her darkened room in an attempt to stave it off. Madge could, and did, cover for her mother as hostess at smaller events, but that wasn't an option today.

As far as Madge knew, her mother hadn't had a bad headache recently, but then again, Madge had been at school. Madge realized that she'd been hoping, or assumed, that the absence of headache news meant there weren't any, but now, home again, that seemed ridiculous. Her mother would never go out of her way to tell Madge, or anyone else for that matter. She clearly didn't even want Madge to know today.

When Mrs. Undersee and Maysilee had disappeared, Madge stepped back and let the kitchen door swing closed. She looked over at Peeta, who had moved next to his delivery cart to make sure all the plates and cookies were in order.

"Everything all right?" he asked.

"Sure," she said, nodding enthusiastically. Probably a little too enthusiastically; Peeta wasn't an idiot. "But I have a lot to do to get ready for tonight. My mom gave me a list this morning and I should get started on it." Especially if her mother was going to be out of commission for the afternoon.

Peeta watched her carefully. "You sure?"

"Absolutely." Madge smiled again.

He seemed to understand that she wasn't going to talk about whatever was bothering her, and focused on flipping through his folder for the delivery invoice to leave for her parents. Madge appreciated that he understood that she'd tell him whatever she wanted to tell him, on her own schedule, like she had about what happened with Greg.

Pulling his jacket off the chair it was draped over, Peeta slipped his arms inside. He hesitated for a moment and then said quietly, "About Katniss... I just need the right moment. You'll be one of the only other people Gale knows tonight—could you just introduce him to other people so he won't be guarding her the whole time?"

Another situation to juggle. Another demand for her to delicately manage. "I'll see what I can do," Madge promised. She wanted to help Peeta—she was on his side, unquestionably. He and Katniss got along so well, and were already almost together anyway. And Gale, well, he was a jerk at least 75% of the time and lived in North Dakota. Of course Madge was pulling for Peeta.

But inwardly she wondered if she could take some of her mother's migraine medicine, because this party was probably going to give _her_ a headache.

#

Gale was not in the best mood ever when he pulled up to Katniss's house to drive her to the Undersees' holiday party. He'd been out late the night before with high school friends and drank too much, so he ended up having to sleep over at Steve's house. He'd forgotten he had to take Vick to the dentist while his mom was at work and had been woken from his hangover by a barrage of phone calls from his family asking him where he was, when he was going to get back, and did he remember about the dentist appointment? He felt like such a jackass. He did get Vick to the dentist, though they were pretty late and Vick griped afterward that he thought the dentist had been extra mean with the scraper because of it.

Then at some point during the day, Katniss's mom had called his mom to make sure he knew to wear a suit to the Undersees' party—it was _that_ formal—and that hadn't been pleasant, either. The last time he'd worn a suit had been to his father's funeral. He had to dig the suit out of the attic. Of course the damn thing didn't even fit anymore, forcing him to dig farther into the attic to unearth one of his father's old suits, which his mom had to scramble to alter when she got home from work. So he was late picking up Katniss, feeling guilty about causing stress for his mom and Vick, and wrestling with more memories of his father's funeral than he'd counted on.

Katniss didn't seem to be in a great mood either, her expression stony and distant as she climbed into the truck. She didn't look directly at him and instead stared out the front window.

"Hey," he said. "You all right? What's up?"

"Nothing."

"You sure?" he asked. "You seem a little tense."

"We're late. My mom and Prim left a half hour ago."

"Sorry, I had a problem with my suit." He started the truck and explained to her the whole saga as he began the drive to Madge's house. He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. If they were going to a normal party rather than a snooty political shindig, he wouldn't have had to dress up.

Katniss glanced over at him. "The suit looks all right," she said in a flat tone. "Fits and everything."

"Thanks to Ma," he said. He took a moment to look at Katniss, who was wearing a dark green, knee-length dress. He couldn't see what the top half of the dress looked like because she was wearing her multi-colored puffy nylon snow jacket, zipped all the way up. It didn't exactly match her dress, but the effect was kind of adorable in an unpretentious way and, most importantly, was probably keeping her warm. He smiled. "Hey. You look good."

Katniss frowned and crossed her arms, sitting back in her seat again. "Thanks."

Well, something was still bugging her. "Are you feeling all right? Do you want to skip this party? Because it would be _fine_ with me to do something else."

"I can't skip it," Katniss snapped. "My family goes every year. Madge would be so hurt. I don't _want_ to skip."

"Okay, then," he said, backing off. "You just seem like you aren't in a party-going mood."

"I'm never in a party-going mood."

Gale laughed lightly and accelerated as he merged onto the highway. "I won't argue with that."

That at least earned him a small smile. But it faded and Katniss's sour expression returned within a few minutes. He tried to get her to talk about her shift at the store ("Fine") and her Christmas shopping ("Done") and finally just decided to be the one to converse, since she wouldn't. He shared updates about their old classmates he'd seen at the party the night before. Katniss had barely paid any attention to most of them, but she did seem at least sort of interested in hearing what people had been up to since graduation.

"How's Ashley?" Katniss asked.

Gale had been absentmindedly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel but stilled at Katniss's question. Her tone, trying much too hard to be nonchalant, gave her away. But what he couldn't figure out was who she'd talked to—he didn't think she kept in touch with many of their classmates.

He must have taken too long to answer, because Katniss said, "Delly came into the store this afternoon. Gushing about how sweet it was that you guys got back together last night, how most high school sweethearts don't make it, but it looked like you guys were going to beat the odds."

Gale pinched his nose. He really didn't want to think about this, much less talk about it. "We aren't back together," he said carefully.

"That's not what it sounded like."

"Who knows better, me or Delly?" he asked, irritation edging into his tone. "It's nothing. We drank too much, fell into old habits, it's not like it means anything." He and Ashley been together for the last few months of high school; she'd been his last girlfriend before left for North Dakota. She was single, he was single, they were doing shots at the party... So what if they ended up making out fairly publicly, it wasn't a declaration of true love.

"Did you tell her this time that you're not together?"

"She knows."

"Did you _tell_ her?"

"Jesus, Katniss, why do you care anyway?" She never used to bother him about his girlfriends or his breakups.

"Because I'm the one who she'll ask if you didn't! That's what happened before. She bugged me all summer, asking if I'd heard from you, if I knew how you were doing, when you were coming back. She was always coming into the store. She'd pretend to be shopping but really she'd just ask me about you. And she would _never_ buy anything!" Gale knew the not-buying part was probably almost as much of a crime to Katniss as pestering her about Gale.

"I broke up with her when I left," Gale said firmly, annoyed that either Ashley or Katniss had gotten their facts wrong. "Sorry she bothered you."

"She was _really_ annoying," Katniss huffed, arms still crossed in front of her.

"I could not have been clearer that we were done," Gale said. "And last night was just an accident, a mistake. We're not back together," he repeated. He'd been too busy today with the dentist appointment and the suit disaster to return Ashley's messages, but he made a mental note to do it tomorrow and to be crystal clear that they'd just had a relapse, not a restart.

More interesting, though, was Katniss's reaction. As annoyed as he was by the whole situation, he did wonder if it was possible that she was jealous. She'd never cared in the slightest about his dating life when they were in high school. Had absence made the heart grow fonder? But then there was that preppy blond cookie kid and the way she'd been looking at him at the mall...

Katniss seemed to be mollified if not happy with Gale's answers, though the atmosphere in the truck felt strained, a far cry from the easy silence they used to share when they were running together or carpooling to the mall. In the quiet, Gale felt Ashley-inspired guilt creeping up on him. He should have been more careful at that party last night. He'd been complaining to her about how the ratio of men to women in North Dakota was approximately four million to zero, and the next thing he knew they'd been tangled on the couch in Steve's basement together. He didn't want to hurt her, and hadn't realized how hard his departure last spring had been for her. She hadn't even called him that often over the summer, probably consciously trying to not seem clingy.

Katniss reached for the radio dial and twisted it a few times before remembering it was broken. He took it as a sign that she was ready to think about something different and said lightly that he was planning on finally getting the stereo fixed over the break. Then he racked his brain for a safe conversation topic. Finally he settled on their high school team's showing at the cross-country state championship. Everyone had been worried about how they'd fare without Katniss, but the girls' team had actually taken third place.

He could sense Katniss mellowing as she talked about the new varsity squad and which runners were the most promising. He speculated right along with her about the rival teams that posed the biggest threat to theirs, but in the corners of his mind he mulled over the possibility that Katniss didn't only think of him as a running partner or friend anymore.


	8. Party

Madge's cheek muscles hurt from smiling. She had to stand with her parents near the front door, welcoming guests and thanking them for coming, shaking so many hands she'd probably been exposed to fifty different varieties of cold virus by now. Her father thrived on this kind of thing and her mother seemed to be effortlessly skilled at it when she was well, which she appeared to be at the moment thanks to her afternoon rest and new migraine prescription, though Madge was keeping a close eye on her. But for Madge these meet-and-greets were a torment, a reminder that within her family, her primary role was to be a photogenic, pleasant young woman. Bonus, but not required, if she could show she had some brains and charm.

She inched closer to the heater that had been set up to ward against the constant draft from the front doors opening as guests arrived. Her dress was velvet and long-sleeved, but there was only so much warmth it could provide against the winter air. Its most important quality was that the dark crimson fabric perfectly matched her father's tie and her mother's wrap. Their family presented a carefully coordinated image of black and red. It was far from the only orchestrated element of the night.

"And don't you look lovely tonight, dear," said an elderly woman who Madge vaguely recognized. A wealthy donor of some kind. Probably couldn't remember Madge's name. Fair enough because Madge didn't remember hers either.

"Thank you," Madge said graciously, smiling. Again. She complimented the woman's earrings, said she hoped she enjoyed the party, and the woman moved on to the coat check line. Madge glanced out the door to see if the stream of attendees was ebbing, and brightened when she caught a glimpse of Katniss. Leaning around her mother, Madge waved enthusiastically at her friend.

Katniss grinned and waved back. Madge gestured for her to skip the line, so seconds later Katniss, with Gale in tow, stepped around the knot of people talking to Madge's parents and joined Madge in the entryway. Mrs. Undersee glanced at them, but had to turn her attention back to her own conversation.

Katniss had somehow gotten Gale into a suit, and Madge thought that even though it was cheaply made, it actually looked pretty good. He filled it out well, and dark colors suited him. He'd also gotten a haircut, leaving his hair slightly less shaggy and no longer hanging as far into his eyes. Katniss was wearing a forest green dress and had wisely already removed her sporty winter coat that clashed horribly with her outfit. Her long, straight hair hung loose around her shoulders, a simple but elegant style that contrasted sharply with her near-constant single braid.

Madge hugged her friend. "So glad you're here. I needed a friendly face."

Katniss hugged her back and whispered, "You all right? About Greg?"

"Of course," Madge said lightly. She didn't want to risk any chinks in her armor this early in the night. "Ancient history."

Katniss squinted at her, but seemed to realize that this wasn't the time or place for further discussion. She glanced around the entryway. "There's a lot... more... than last year."

There was indeed more of everything: party attendees, food, and especially decorations. Garlands lined the banisters, and tinsel and wreaths hung from anything that would hold them. The house was practically shouting that the Undersees were hosting a holiday party.

"Everything looks really nice," Katniss quickly added.

"Special year," Madge said tightly, her eyes darting toward Gale's. She regretted admitting to him that her father was going to announce his run for office. She really shouldn't have, and had no guarantees other than his apparent lack of interest than he wouldn't tell others.

Gale's eyes, however, were on her chest, and specifically, the neckline of her dress (which really wasn't _that_ low). She reached up to adjust the pendant on her necklace, which snapped his attention upward.

"Hey," he said.

Madge waited for him to make a crack about her dress or to gripe about what a waste of money the entire event was, but he seemed to be insult-free. Suspicious. Was he on good behavior because Katniss was listening?

"Well, come on in," Madge said after giving Gale enough time to make a polite comment along the lines of complimenting the music. But politeness was probably expecting too much of him; she knew she should be satisfied with a lack of hostility. So she pointed out the food and drink stations, and let Katniss know that her mother and sister were mingling in the living room. "And Peeta's here already if you want to say hi." Madge turned, searching for him, and pointed. "There he is, by the cookie display. He's probably talking up the bakery to all these potential customers."

Katniss held up her hand to give a shy wave to Peeta, who looked like he'd paused mid-sentence to stare at her. He recovered quickly, waving back and gesturing for her to join him, which Madge saw triggered a frown from Gale. She bit back a smile. Gale didn't stand a chance against Peeta's sincere form of charm.

Then Madge noticed Representative Baxter and her husband waiting to talk to her, so she quickly told Katniss that she'd catch up with her later and turned her attention back to her greeting duties while Katniss and Gale made their way into the house.

As the number of guests waiting in the greeting line shrank, Madge's parents released her so they could all mingle. "Divide and conquer" was what Haymitch and Maysilee always said when coaching her parents about how to maximize their number of contacts with voters and potential donors—they could reach double the number of people if they separately worked the room. Her parents, each armed with a glass of wine, immediately targeted whoever they needed to be wooing, and Madge could see that Haymitch and Maysilee were doing the same thing. Madge's assigned task was to re-connect with her high school classmates, who were almost all from wealthy or influential families who could afford the school's tuition. Under Haymitch's "trickle up" theory, her classmates would take goodwill for Madge and the Undersees home to their parents and her father would win some votes that way.

It made Madge weary to think about. She hadn't been close to many of her classmates during school and didn't want to fake interest in them now. So she was almost glad when Kevin the Campaign Wonder Boy intercepted her at the table with the mulled cider in the living room, where Madge had been dawdling as she tried to locate Katniss or Peeta in the crowd.

"Everything looks good so far," Kevin said, pulling the empty mug from Madge's hands so he could fill it for her.

"Right," she agreed tersely. She wasn't a damsel in distress. She could pour her own cider.

"Good turnout," he mused, "some big names, a few reporters. Promising start."

"Umm hmm." Madge didn't know why he was wasting time talking to her when those big names were waiting for him.

He ladled some cider into her mug and glanced at her. "Your parents doing all right? Nervous? You know them best."

As though she'd tell him if he had any concerns. "They're pros," she said simply.

"How's your mother? Feeling up to this?"

"She's great." Madge didn't even pause, though she did wonder what he'd heard and who he'd talked to.

He watched her for a few seconds to ensure she understood that he'd heard otherwise, but didn't press the issue. Madge, who had no intention of giving so much as an inch, just watched him expectantly in return.

"How about you?" he asked. "Having fun?"

"Sure," she said lightly.

He laughed and pulled a flask from his suit jacket, holding it above her mug with raised eyebrows. "You want to have a little _more_ fun? Take the edge off?"

Madge hesitated. She never took drinks from guys she didn't know; she just wasn't sure whether Kevin fell into the category of known or unknown. He was on their side, working for her father, but that didn't mean she automatically trusted him. She didn't know exactly what was in that flask or how strong it was.

"You seem tense," he said, his tone dropping the playful edge and becoming more serious. He set the flask on the table between their mugs. "It's better for appearances if the candidate's daughter looks like she isn't being forced to run the gauntlet."

"I look fine," she said evenly. Madge knew she was good at faking comfort and ease at these events. She just didn't especially feel the need to hide her irritation with Kevin _from_ Kevin.

"Not to the close observer," he said simply.

"People are watching my father, not me," she pointed out.

"Maybe not everyone," Kevin said with a nod, gazing across the room toward Katniss and Gale, who were standing with Peeta and a group of Madge's high school classmates. Peeta seemed to be joking with a few of their classmates, while Katniss listened with a small, content smile. Madge's first reaction was relief that Peeta could take over her "trickle up" duties as far as building goodwill among her high school classmates, but then she realized that Gale was the person Kevin must have been referring to as watching her. Gale, pointedly ignoring Peeta's story, was turned partly away from the group, facing the drink table where Madge and Kevin stood. But as he noticed Madge looking at him, he turned back toward the high school group.

"Who is he?" Kevin asked. "He's the reason you were late to dinner the other night, right? Secret boyfriend your parents don't approve of?"

" _What?_ No. No, that's absurd."

"So they do approve?"

"He's not my—. He's nothing. There's nothing to approve or disapprove."

Kevin was grinning at her, which was infuriating. He scratched his chin as though he were deep in thought. "Didn't Shakespeare say something about the lady protesting too much..."

"Didn't he also say something about not butting into other people's business?" Madge snapped. "Especially when there are donors to court and endorsements to chase?"

"Hmmmm, was that a sonnet? I don't remember that one from English class."

Madge pushed her mug of cider to the side of the table where the used, empty mugs sat until they were collected by the waitstaff. "I'm underage," she said sweetly. "And I think my father is paying you to help him get votes, not give me a hard time. But thanks for your concern. You should probably get back to your job."

She could tell she hadn't phased Kevin in the slightest; she could hear him chuckling as she walked away. But she had a pretty good idea of his angle now: probing for weak points in the campaign. It was a necessary step—you could only fend off attacks if you knew your own side's vulnerabilities—but she didn't want either herself or her mother to be flagged as potential weak links. It made her uneasy that Kevin remembered Gale from the night of the kickoff dinner, and she was embarrassed prematurely at the prospect of him hassling Gale the way he'd just taunted her.

"Madge!"

Peeta was waving her over to their group. Madge waved back with a smile and then very purposefully walked in the opposite direction. She needed a moment, a time-out from being pulled in so many directions. Standing in the shadow of a large ficus strewn with blinking white holiday lights, Madge leaned with one hand against the wall and pretended to adjust the ankle strap on her right heel. How was she supposed to help Peeta distract Gale when Kevin and her mother and who knows who else were watching her so closely, and might give Gale a hard time? He already looked miserable and it didn't seem fair for him to be targeted by anyone else. And did she really want to interfere? Madge couldn't imagine Katniss being happy to learn that Madge and Peeta were plotting together against Gale.

Not that Katniss seemed particularly glad to be around Gale at the moment; she had positioned herself so her back was to him and was facing Peeta, who was nervously trying to converse both with his high school friends and with Katniss. Every once in a while he cast a pleading look across the room to Madge. She smiled tightly, trying to convey that she just needed some time to come up with a plan, which was true. She would have to join their group, but she didn't want to be caught off guard again. Kevin had thrown her off her game.

Madge let her eyes drift back to Gale, who looked as unhappy as she felt. He was scowling at his cup of bright pink punch, and Madge suddenly wished she could trade places with him. Not to be in the middle of a group of people she had nothing in common with, but to be the person scowling and not even trying to hide how badly she wanted to be somewhere else.

Madge didn't realize she'd been staring until Gale looked up suddenly and caught her. She quickly turned her attention back to fiddling with her shoe, and hoped she wasn't blushing. The house was warm, with so many bodies crammed inside. Maybe she just looked flushed. It wasn't like she was staring at him because he looked good (though, really, he did), but her real reason—being jealous that he could be so openly hostile when she couldn't—wasn't something she could admit, much less explain, to anyone.

When she looked up again, Gale had returned to glaring in Peeta's direction. Katniss seemed as uncomfortable as before, which gave Madge an idea. Pushing her foot back into her shoe, she painted her party-smile onto her face, and after crossing the room to join the group, she chit-chatted her way through the outer perimeter of high school classmates, who were easily dispensed with generic observations about how hard finals were and how amazing it was to live away from home. Soon she was standing between Katniss and Gale.

Gale eyed her suspiciously and Peeta looked hopeful, but Madge turned her attention to Katniss.

"Katniss, did you the see the university's Athletic Director is here?" Madge nodded across the room at a tall man with graying hair, slim except for a large belly and jowls that made him look like a bulldog. "You should go talk to him about your idea."

Katniss followed Madge's gaze but didn't move. "He probably doesn't want to think about work."

"No, it's what people do at these things," Madge urged.

"He isn't going to approve the idea, here at the party," Katniss said. "I don't even know how it would work—"

"You don't need to. You're just planting the seed right now," Madge said. "You mention it, he thinks about it over the break, and then you can talk to him again when we're back on campus."

"What _is_ this idea?" Gale asked Katniss. Peeta also looked confused and watched Katniss closely.

Katniss suddenly became very interested in studying the pink drink in her cup. "It's nothing."

"It's a great idea," Madge answered, looking at Gale. He was the perfect person to encourage Katniss, which would be a much better job for him than serving as Katniss's guard dog all night. "It's about starting a program where the sports-focused physical therapy students could work with nearby high school teams to get more experience helping athletes recover from injuries."

Gale looked appraisingly at Katniss. "I could have used something like that last year."

"I know," she said, still looking at her drink. "That's why I thought of it." After a few seconds, she looked up and added, "On the university's track team, we have doctors and trainers and... everything, really. They help us recover and teach us how to avoid injuries. But most high schools—like ours—don't have much of anything. Even just some basics would help—stuff the coaches don't know or don't have time for."

"You _should_ talk to the guy," Gale said, more warmly.

"Yeah," Peeta agreed, jumping in. "Don't worry if you don't have all the details sorted out. Like Madge said, you're just planting the idea. That's smart marketing," he added with an approving nod directed at Madge.

Katniss traced her finger around the rim of her cup and glanced in the direction of the Athletic Director.

Madge touched Katniss's elbow. "I'll introduce you," she offered quietly. "It really is fine to talk to him. He'll probably be glad to talk to a student. He's nice."

Katniss bit her lip and started to nod. Madge gently pulled her away before she could change her mind, giving her friend a reassuring squeeze on the arm. She also wanted to get away before Peeta or Gale or both decided to accompany them. The goal was to get Katniss _away_ from the mess.

Katniss glanced backward as she and Madge walked away. "Gale doesn't know anyone here—"

"He knows Peeta, doesn't he?" Madge pointed out. "Peeta will introduce him to people." Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that that was indeed what was happening, unsurprisingly since the alternative was for Peeta to talk to Gale himself. It looked like Peeta was introducing a very reluctant Gale to Ryan Murphy, a guy who'd been a year ahead of them in high school and who was also a runner. He and Gale would be able to talk about track. Madge swallowed a smirk as it occurred to her that Gale might even be able to knock Ryan off his high horse a bit; Ryan's ego was a force to be reckoned with and Madge suspected Gale wouldn't mind doing some reckoning.

Madge and Katniss navigated through the guests to the other side of the room, where the AD of the university was talking with a woman Madge didn't know. When he noticed Madge and Katniss waiting to talk to him, he extricated himself from his conversation and greeted Madge with a wide smile.

"If it isn't the littlest Undersee," he boomed, clapping Madge's shoulder as though she were one of his drinking buddies in a bar. She guessed the beer he was holding was not his first of the night. "How'd your first semester of college treat you?"

"Just fine," Madge lied before turning to pull Katniss closer. "Mr. Meyer, this is Katniss Everdeen, one of the stars of your freshman class." Madge proceeded to brag about what an asset Katniss was to the university's track team, and when she mentioned the new Olympics-training regimen Katniss's coach had started for her, the AD realized he had actually heard of this girl among the many athletes at the school. Soon they were talking about the Olympics training program, and even though Katniss wasn't exactly comfortable, Madge could tell she wasn't as nervous when she was talking about running. Madge was able to smoothly prompt Katniss to describe her physical therapy idea, which the AD seemed to be genuinely interested in. He was asking good questions, trying to learn more about Katniss's background and what she had in mind.

Madge hung back and listened to their conversation, though she was also observing the rest of the party swirling around them. She saw that Gale and Peeta had each settled into separate conversations with people from the high school cluster. Ryan Murphy had disappeared, hopefully with his tail between his legs. Katniss's little sister Prim stood with several other middle schoolers near the sundae station, piling toppings onto heaping bowls of ice cream. Aunt Maysilee and Mrs. Everdeen had parked themselves next to the fireplace and were laughing, probably reminiscing or gossiping. Madge absently wondered if she and Katniss would still be friends when they were as old as their mothers, and then with a start she realized that she didn't see her parents anywhere, which was strange. Usually they were in the middle of everything. Unless...

From across the room she spotted Haymitch approaching her with an intent expression. He gestured for her to follow him, which was how Madge figured out where her parents were: waiting for her upstairs so they could all make an entrance together and present a united front.

It was time for the announcement.


	9. Announcement

Gale thought the Undersees' party could be vastly improved by making it easier for the underage attendees to sneak a drink. He understood that an important state official couldn't openly hand out alcohol to minors, but for someone who no doubt wanted to woo the youth vote the guy wasn't off to a great start. Most of the younger attendees—preppy snots from Madge's private high school, like the guy Gale got stuck talking to when Madge stole Katniss away—seemed awfully stiff. Maybe it was the suits all the guys wore, looking nearly as uncomfortable as Gale himself, or maybe it was that so many of them seemed nervous, like they were trying to impress someone. Either way, Gale figured they'd all enjoy themselves a little more if the bartenders and caterers weren't such sticklers.

The upside of the preppy snots was that they all seemed to be best friends with Peeta, so Peeta wasn't available to hang all over Katniss like he clearly wanted to. Gale really didn't need to see that. It was bad enough to witness how obvious it was that Katniss had a more than friendly interest in Peeta. What that meant, Gale wasn't entirely sure yet thanks to her strange reaction to the Ashley incident. Still, he didn't take it as a promising sign that Katniss's reaction to him was hostility, while she was practically fawning all over the schmoozy blond motormouth.

He shouldn't have come to this party. All he was accomplishing was hurting his friendship with Katniss, who was barely speaking to him and still seemed upset. He would have been better off spending these hours with his family or his other high school friends, people he actually wanted to see during his short trip home. Not these strangers. And this house was too warm and too crowded, both with people and decorations. For the first time ever, he found himself missing the openness of the North Dakota prairie. He'd rather be there than cooped up in a mansion with three hundred people he didn't know or have any desire to know.

The tie around his neck was starting to feel like a noose, so he loosened it a bit and checked again if Katniss was free yet. His one hope was that he could convince her to sneak outside with him to get some air. Maybe he'd apologize for coming to this party when he so clearly shouldn't have, and see if she'd mind if he bailed early. There was a dull ache in his chest as he acknowledged that no, she probably wouldn't mind, and might even be relieved. But she was still talking to the university's Athletic Director, which was promising as far as her physical therapy idea was concerned, though it did not bode well for Gale's ability to endure the party for much longer. Katniss didn't exactly seem at ease, but she wasn't obviously itching to break free the way Gale was.

He noticed that Madge had vanished, no longer flanking Katniss like a tour guide in a prison. Glancing around the room, Gale tried to locate her in the crowd. He was curious if he'd catch her losing her composure again. He was pretty sure she'd gotten pissed off at the guy who'd been hitting on her at the cider bowl, and had been pleased to see her flounce off angrily. Gale felt like he deserved a prize every time he caught a glimpse of the snarling lion beneath her kitten-like exterior. Watching to see if anything set off Madge Undersee was the one interesting thing this party had going for it.

As the carolers finished the last verse of "Deck the Halls," a series of bells started tinkling and the lights in the foyer flickered, causing the party guests to wrap up their conversations and look around to see what was happening. Following the direction of the bells, Gale spotted Madge standing with her parents on the landing half-way up the staircase, the three of them looking out like royalty on the sea of people below. Mr. Undersee wore a tuxedo and an affable smile, Mrs. Undersee looked pleased and polished in her bright red yet business-like holiday dress suit, and Madge, well, she was standing half a step behind her parents, clearly situated—and dressed—to play a supporting role and complement them, but Gale didn't know why anyone in their right mind would look at her parents when Madge was within sight. He probably wasn't the only person appreciating the way her dress hugged her figure, though it was possible he was alone in his efforts to get a sense of her true reaction to this. He knew, from her strange confession when he'd driven her home, that she wasn't thrilled about her father running for governor, but on the stairs tonight she projected no such hesitation. Apparently growing up in the public eye had helped her develop some finely honed acting skills.

Mr. Undersee held up his hands to quiet the crowd. "Happy Holidays, friends. My family and I thank each and every one of you for joining us tonight. This is a special time of year and being able to celebrate with all of you is one of the highlights of the season for us." He smiled broadly into the crowd, somehow conveying that he was speaking to each person individually. Gale had never even spoken directly to the guy and was surprised to realize that he felt like Mr. Undersee had invited him personally to the party and was just itching for a chance to chat about whatever pressing issues were on Gale's mind. Which was absurd, he recognized a few seconds later when he caught sight of Madge's mother and remembered how unwelcome he truly was. Politicians like Madge's father knew how to turn their charm up to turbo levels.

Continuing, Mr. Undersee said, "Each year we look forward to this opportunity to catch up with all the people in our lives, and to truly stop and reflect on the past year. It's been a tough one. I know many of our hard-working families and businesses are still struggling to get back on their feet in this economy." He paused to let his sympathies sink in and then resumed speaking. "I've asked myself over and over what more I can do to help our citizens, and I believe the answer is: to continue and build on the work I've started under Governor Crane, moving our state forward. I truly believe in our future: we _can_ and we _will_ see a return to prosperity in these hills and hollows. I would be honored to be the one to lead us there, which is why I am officially declaring my candidacy for governor of this great state!"

He reached for Madge's mother's hand and raised them both in the air as everyone cheered. Madge smiled and joined in the clapping. A few seconds later, Mrs. Undersee wrapped her arm around Madge's shoulder and pulled her neatly into the hug. The only sign of Madge's unease was a tiny flinch as several cameras flashed, capturing the moment.

"Please, continue enjoying the evening!" Mr. Undersee urged. He encouraged everyone to partake in the food and drinks, and then said he would be happy to answer any questions about his candidacy. Madge seemed to have to be involved with the question part, since Gale noticed her mother steering her by the shoulder down the staircase to the small group of reporters waiting for them.

Curious, Gale maneuvered his way through the crowd so he was close enough to overhear the questions and answers. It seemed to be a mini-press event, with several reporters interviewing Mr. Undersee on his major policy views and his take on other likely candidates in the primary. Gale thought his answers sounded energetic but vague, like his short announcement speech, and noticed that he didn't mention any of his potential opponents by name, which made sense since he was probably the biggest name in the race so far. Why give anyone else an edge by acknowledging that they might pose a threat as a viable candidate? One reporter asked whether Mr. Undersee would be open to a vice presidential nomination in the future, a question that Mr. Undersee dodged as too hypothetical while at the same time indicating how flattered he was that anyone thought to ask the question. In other words, yes, of course he was interested.

Gale's ears really perked up, though, at a question about whether Madge would be involved in the campaign.

"Oh yes, Margaret will be taking on a key leadership role," her father said, putting his arm around her. "Her mother and I couldn't be prouder—she's a freshman at the good old U of A this year, and she's already planning to work with other motivated students who care as much about the future of our state as she does. And of course, as much as I do. In fact, Madge will be setting up a group called Undergrads for Undersee next semester." He smiled proudly at the reporter, and then briefly at Madge.

There. Gale saw it: a flicker in the steadiness of Madge's outward image as the perfect candidate's daughter. Her eyes had widened ever so slightly at her father's comments, and her subsequent smile up at him was a little too tight to be natural. Though she recovered quickly and was nodding and smiling prettily for the cameras, Gale had seen a glimpse of her initial surprise.

"And what will Undergrads for Undersee do?" the reporter asked Madge directly.

"Well, that's a good question," Madge said gamely. She swallowed, apparently buying herself some time. "That's something the members will need to decide, but I think at a minimum we would hold voter registration drives."

"Excellent idea!" her father agreed. "Instilling civic values and investment in governance are two things the Undersees believe wholeheartedly in supporting." He beamed at Madge, who pressed her lips into a pseudo-smile at him in response.

Another reporter asked Mr. Undersee a question about education policy, and Madge listened politely to the answer. But as her father's response to the question lengthened into a speech, she let her eyes wander. When they landed on Gale, he saw it again: she was _pissed_. He felt a jolt as he realized that she was letting him see her true reaction. Did she need a witness to her frustration? A release valve? Did she just associate being angry with him in particular? Madge held his gaze for a few seconds before turning back to the reporters.

After a few more questions, the media circle disbanded. Dismissed from duty as her parents were sucked into new conversations, Madge skillfully wove through the crowd, headed for the back of the house. Gale followed. He knew an escape attempt when he saw one.

What he didn't know was the layout of the Undersees' massive house. He passed a study lined with shelves, a conference room equipped with high tech AV equipment, and several roped-off rooms decorated in what were probably authentic late 19th century furnishings. The house was a strange mix of historic preservation and modern renovations. The number of party guests thinned the farther Gale strayed from the front foyer and living room, but none of the people he encountered were Madge.

He ended up in a large room filled with several armchairs and sectional couches and a television that took up almost an entire wall. No Madge, although he discovered a sliding glass door behind a panel of floor-length curtains. Exit point. Pushing aside the curtains and peering into the darkness outside, he spotted her, pacing the patio.

Madge looked up at him when he slid the door open, but didn't slow her pacing. Gale quietly closed the door again, the lingering sounds of music and laughter from the party immediately cut off. When Madge eyed him suspiciously, he held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender and stayed near the door. She looked a little dangerous, eyes narrowed and cheeks flushed. Actually, she reminded him of the way she'd looked in her dorm room, when she'd been angry and not afraid to show it.

He wanted to know what caused her to snap. She was so practiced at her public persona, what pushed her to have to get away? He tried to look nonthreatening so she would understand he hadn't followed her to give her any grief.

Madge appeared to have decided he wasn't her biggest problem at the moment and stopped pacing to glare at him, her fury building. And then she exploded.

" _Undergrads for Undersee?_ " she hissed, saying the name as though it was an insult. "I _told_ them it was a bad idea! At that dinner last week! _And_ I told them I couldn't do it. But my father just goes ahead and announces it to the press like it's already set up! He _never_ listens to me!"

She glared back toward the house and kept ranting. " _None_ of them listen to me, or tell me anything. You'd think they could be bothered to mention this if it's something I'm supposed to know about. But no, I'm just a windup doll: show up, wear this dress, smile, don't say anything controversial, start a random student group. What if I'd told that reporter I thought the student group idea was terrible?"

Madge was looking at Gale as though she expected him to answer.

"You'd do that?" he asked skeptically.

" _No, of course not_ ," she snapped. "Which my parents and everyone else all know. But that doesn't mean it's OK for them to do this kind of thing without talking to me."

Gale must not have looked sufficiently sympathetic or outraged for Madge's taste, because she kept watching him and he could feel her working herself into another outburst. Sure enough, within a few seconds she let loose again.

"And if you came out here to call me a poor little princess who doesn't have real problems the way you do, well, you can just leave. I _know_ other people have more important problems than I do—that's why I came out here to be by myself so no one else has to be bothered by me."

Keeping his distance, Gale frowned at her. "I'd be mad if I were you, too."

Madge narrowed her eyes at him as though he'd just set a trap for her to walk into. "Really?" she asked in a guarded tone.

"Yeah. It sounds like they should have talked to you. And I don't know exactly what's going on between you and your parents, but if this thing set you off this much, I'd gamble it's just the tip of the iceberg with whatever your... issues are."

Madge's breaths were still short and angry—he could see the abrupt clouds puffing out from her mouth in the cold air. He tried to focus on her face, instead of how the bodice of her dress rippled in rhythm with her breathing.

"Just don't do the club," he said. "Tell your old man you're not on board and don't get worked up about it."

"He already told reporters. It will look like I don't support him."

"Students are busy," Gale said with shrug. Katniss definitely was. "If anyone gives you any shit, say you're too busy with classes or whatever you spend your time on."

That didn't seem to be the right advice, because Madge started pacing angrily again. Gale wondered if she was purposefully making this more difficult than it needed to be. Who cared about some stupid club? The election wouldn't be won or lost based on what a handful of students were doing.

"They must have had this planned out," Madge said, still pacing. "My parents. Thinking ahead to this election. Making sure I was at the university to give my father an edge."

"How much of an edge is it, really?" Gale asked skeptically.

Madge snapped her attention back to him, and he could have sworn she seemed offended that he dared question her. "My father only moved here after he married my mom. You know how people are, and how they are about the school."

"Ah." Gale did know. He, and nearly everyone he knew, was suspicious of anyone who wasn't originally from the state, with good cause in Gale's opinion—they were usually rich people like Madge's father, who swooped in and ended up even richer while everyone Gale knew stayed as poor as ever. But locals were also fiercely loyal to the state university's football team, since no professional teams—for any sport—played in the state or even within driving distance. Everyone's civic pride ended up being translated into support for the university's team. If Madge's father thought he'd need to fend off attacks that he wasn't true enough to the state, it did make sense that Madge being at the university could help him.

"Why are you so worked up about it?" Gale asked. This couldn't have been a surprise to her.

Madge stopped walking and paused, watching Gale carefully as though weighing how much she wanted to tell him and whether she could trust him. He realized that he wanted her to—to trust him, and to tell him whatever it was. He was curious—he couldn't seem to find out enough about her—and she clearly needed someone to listen to her. For a moment, it seemed like she was about to say something, but then, instead of talking, Madge sank into the patio lounge chair behind her and seemed to shrink into herself. He could practically see her shutting down, this latest flame of fury already starting to flicker away, Madge's usual internal filter replacing it.

As she shivered in the night air, Gale crossed the patio and held out his jacket for her. "Go on, it's cold," he said when she hesitated. "This feels balmy compared to North Dakota."

Madge pulled the jacket on, still shivering, and tugged it tightly around her chest. His suit was large enough that it made her look like, well, a little blond doll, exactly what she'd been complaining about. A very pretty, sad little doll.

Focused on the patio pavement below her chair, Madge said softly, "I just... I feel like a puppet, always doing what they want. I used to think they only wanted what was best for me, but... I can't tell the difference lately between what's best for my father, what's best for our family, and what's best for me. I'm not sure it's always the same thing. I know they care about me, but when they care about so many other things _more_... I don't know. It gets to me sometimes."

Madge sounded so downtrodden, it took Gale a moment for her words to sink in. Her concern—being uncertain about how important she was to her parents—was so foreign to his own experience, it was difficult to understand on a gut level. He'd never had the slightest doubt that either of his parents would have moved mountains to do whatever they needed to for him or his siblings. His father _did_ move mountains, as a miner. From what he knew of the Undersees so far, he could see that Madge's reality was very different.

He shoved his hands into his pants pockets for warmth and waited to see if she was going to say anything else, wondering momentarily how long she could get away with disappearing from the party.

"That sucks, Madge," he eventually said, causing her to glance up with a cautiously surprised expression. It felt like progress. He watched the breeze gently ruffle the few tendrils of her hair framing her face and decided she might tolerate it if he kept talking. "I don't mean this the wrong way, but have you thought about how for you to be a puppet, you have to _let_ someone pull your strings? Maybe you need to cut yourself loose a little."

Madge tugged his suit jacket around herself again and studied the patio for a few moments. Then she looked up at him. "I did... go a little wild at school."

"Which they don't know about," Gale pointed out.

Madge winced. "They will when they see my grades."

Gale groaned and rolled his eyes to the sky. It was a clear, crisp night, so there were plenty of stars to witness his annoyance.

"What?" Madge asked indignantly.

"You're such a cliche, that's all."

"Is that a poor little rich girl crack?"

He sighed loudly. "Yeah, I guess. You walked right into it, though." He pulled up one of the other patio chairs and straddled it. "Okay, so tell me. What'd you do at school? Sleep through a morning class? Date someone who didn't have a trust fund?"

Madge colored faintly and buried her head in his jacket, which was promising. "They wouldn't have liked my ex," she mumbled into the fabric.

Gale leaned forward. "What, are we talking the son of a lowly part-time mayor of some crap town? _Or worse_?" He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice, as curious as he was, and wasn't surprised when Madge shot him a _do you want me to actually tell you_ look in response.

When he didn't make any other cracks, she said, "He's in a band."

"The school marching band? Well, I wouldn't approve, either."

He got a swat on the arm and a frown for that comment. Then Madge pulled her arms back into the cocoon his jacket had created and said, "A real band. I guess you'd call them folk or bluegrass, with a modern twist. They're getting pretty popular. By the end of the semester they were getting bookings all over the state... I'd go their shows, too, sometimes. I... may have missed a few classes."

Gale grinned. "You were a groupie?"

"No!"

Laughing, Gale said, "Yeah, I could see your parents not wanting you to become a groupie."

"I was not a groupie! I was a girlfriend!"

"I'm sure that's what all groupies say." Gale was glad to see the spark back in Madge's eyes. She seemed better off when she was sticking up for herself. He also realized he was pleased to hear her describing this band boyfriend in the past tense, and was about to ask what happened to him—from what he remembered from driving her home, it sounded like it hadn't been an amicable breakup—when he heard the sliding glass door to the house opening behind him.

To his surprise, Katniss stepped out onto the patio. Peeta followed her, which was surprising only in the sense that Gale had temporarily forgotten about him. But his irritation surged back, especially when he noticed Peeta's concerned expression. He didn't have time to speculate about Peeta's concern, because Katniss was glaring at him.

"You're hitting on Madge now, too?"

Gale was so shocked he couldn't respond right away. But Madge was already on her feet. "He's not hitting on me," she said, in a tone that suggested the idea was not only preposterous, but somehow insulting. "We were talking."

Katniss didn't seem to be buying it. "Nice jacket," she said coolly with a pointed look in Madge's direction.

Madge seemed to have forgotten she was wearing Gale's jacket, and flushed slightly. "It's cold out here."

Gale stood up swiftly, aware that his posture—hanging over a chair in Madge's direction—and the tone of their conversation didn't make the situation look as innocent as Madge thought. But he was also annoyed because he hadn't actually been hitting on her, and even if he was, who was Katniss to get on his back about it? If Katniss were a cartoon, she'd have hearts for eyes every time Peeta opened his mouth.

"If I were hitting on her, I'd know it and she'd know it," he said curtly. "I'm not. What's your problem, anyway? You're always hassling us to get along."

"Madge _just_ broke up with her boyfriend," Katniss said. "She doesn't need you swooping in when she's vulnerable, confusing her, and then disappearing again next week."

"I'm not vulnerable," Madge sputtered. "Or confused." But Katniss was watching Gale, not Madge. Gale wasn't used to seeing Katniss angry at him, and unlike when Madge got mad at him, he didn't like it. Katniss's anger reminded him more of his own, which was more difficult to manage than Madge's little outbursts.

"Katniss," Peeta said from behind her, "why don't we go back inside? We found her—Madge is fine. No need to worry."

Gale had forgotten Peeta was with them and felt a fresh surge of irritation. So Peeta got to look like a concerned, helpful friend while Gale came off as a predatory flirt? This whole night was a disaster.

"I need to talk to Gale," Katniss said, still glaring at him and not looking at Peeta. Though her tone dismissed Peeta, he didn't leave.

Madge looked back and forth between Gale and Katniss, clearly not sure what to make of what was happening. "Katniss," she tried again in a conciliatory tone, "Gale saw that I was upset and was just talking to me."

Katniss cast a suspicious look at Madge. "Because he's such an expert in media relations?"

Madge seemed caught off guard at the implied accusation and didn't respond right away. Then she pursed her lips, pulled Gale's jacket off her shoulders, tossed it to him without making eye contact, and walked into the house without another word. Peeta hesitated as Madge passed him, clearly debating whether he should follow her or stay with Katniss. But he quickly must have put it together that he wasn't high on Katniss's list of concerns at the moment and quietly followed Madge back into the house, glancing over his shoulder at Katniss more than once.

Gale shrugged his suit jacket back on, noting in the back of his mind that it was warm and smelled faintly of perfume. He watched Katniss, who was still glaring at him, and waited for her to start talking, to explain why she needed to talk to him like she'd said. But she didn't speak.

"What is it?" he finally asked, somewhat surprised at how irritated he sounded.

"You can't go five seconds without a girlfriend?" Katniss asked. "You're home for a few days and hook up with Ashley, now you're trying to get with Madge. I think you have a problem, Gale. You can't handle being on your own."

This was ridiculous. "I've been single since May when I moved to the end of the earth."

"Not by choice," Katniss countered. "All through high school, you never went more than a few weeks without a girlfriend."

"So?" He had no complaints that he'd never had trouble getting dates. He didn't even usually seek out the girls himself, they just kind of appeared. She was blaming him for that? "You never cared before."

Katniss crossed her arms. "You've never hit on one of my friends before. Madge doesn't need any more boy trouble. I don't want you to use her up and get sick of her the way you did with all your high school girlfriends."

"That's not what happened," he said angrily. "And this isn't about Madge." He was sick of Katniss not admitting she was jealous, and her gripe about his high school girlfriends was wrong in an unexpected way. It was time for them to have it out. "You know what I realized when I was in North Dakota? I never dated anyone for very long because they all seemed the same compared to you. I'd wonder why they weren't as easy to talk to as you were, why they didn't understand me the way you did. So we'd break up, and then I'd find someone else I'd get my hopes up about and just go through it all again."

The irony of his realization still frustrated him: the girl who inspired the very behavior she didn't like, didn't like him for it. He also realized that he had slipped into an angry version of the confession he'd planned a week ago in Katniss's dorm room. It didn't sound as good coming out as an accusation.

Katniss didn't seem to know how to react. She looked like she was trying to be mad, but confusion and surprise were winning out.

"Oh," she finally said. Then more quietly, "Were you going to tell me?"

The energy had gone out of the fight. Now the whole conversation seemed like a deflated opportunity. Gale spoke equally quietly. "Yeah. When I picked you up from school last week. Seemed like the kind of thing to say in person, not on the phone."

Katniss nodded and bit her lip, looking off to the right into the Undersees' dark backyard. Anywhere but Gale. Then she made eye contact with him. "You're leaving again," she said in an accusatory tone. "Soon. What did you think would happen?"

"I hadn't really thought it out," he admitted. "I was hoping I'd stay. Somehow. And I thought maybe you'd go for the idea of a long-distance thing... so you could focus on training."

Both ideas sounded horrible when he said them out loud, and apparently he wasn't alone in thinking that. Katniss, standing with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, seemed extremely uncomfortable, which was disorienting. They'd always gotten along so effortlessly. And he usually knew what she was thinking, but now he had no clue what was going through her head beyond surprise. Unpleasant surprise.

As her silence stretched into the unbearable territory, he said softly, "Katniss. Say something."

She looked up at him and blinked her eyes a couple of times. He took a step toward her, but she backed away.

He froze, her retreat nearly as painful as blowing out his knee.

"I need to go home," she got out. She kept backing away from him, toward the house. "My mom and Prim haven't left yet. I'll ride back with them."

Gale didn't move a single inch closer to her, still stunned that she felt like she needed to run away from him.

What the hell had just happened? 


	10. End of the Party

Madge stalked away from the patio, leaving Katniss, Gale, and Peeta in her wake. She heard Peeta follow her seconds after she passed him, and thought it was probably a good idea. Katniss and Gale clearly needed to talk before they hurt anyone else in their crossfire. Like her. But that didn't mean Madge was going to let them talk in private. She marched straight to the old servants' stairs in the back of the house.

"Do you think she actually likes him?" Peeta asked.

"I don't know," Madge said tersely, not slowing her pace.

"I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to her yet. There were always too many people around. But I was warming up to it. She was laughing at some of my jokes—hey. Madge. Where are we going?"

She pushed the door open to one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor. The room was empty and she left the light off, heading straight for the window and pushing the heavy velvet curtain aside. The patio where Gale and Katniss were standing was directly underneath and Madge could see them standing a good distance apart from one another. They weren't talking, but all was clearly not well.

"You want to eavesdrop?" Peeta asked. "No. We can't."

"They dragged me into this, I have a right to know what they're saying about me. They might be talking about you, too."

Peeta hesitated, and Madge could see him momentarily considering the option. But it was a short moment because he quickly recovered and said firmly, "No."

Madge turned away from him and moved to unlatch the window. Sometimes snooping was necessary. Too often in her house it was the only way to find out the truth.

Peeta's hand shot out to block the latch. "Madge." He was using his let's-all-be-responsible-and-reasonable tone. "Can't you guess what they're saying?"

"Why guess when I can know?"

"Because Katniss is your friend. Are you going to tell her you listened in on her private, personal conversation? How's that going to go?"

Madge paused. She couldn't actually picture that. Madge knew almost everything about Katniss since they were roommates, but that couldn't be helped. Maybe this _was_ different from Madge's parents not telling her anything because they were too busy or thought she wouldn't understand or would get upset. Madge didn't think Katniss kept anything from her, but Madge supposed it was possible. Katniss dealing with boy problems was uncharted territory.

Peering out the window, she could see that whatever was happening between Katniss and Gale, neither seemed happy. Gale looked like the entire world had wronged him and Katniss reminded Madge of a frightened animal on the brink of bolting. Had he told her he liked her? He'd brought those roses to their dorm room... Even imagining Gale confessing his feelings made Madge feel uneasy on Katniss's behalf—it would surely be an unwelcome admission and how awkward would that be? It also slowly occurred to her that eavesdropping would be unfair to Gale. Wasn't it bad enough that he was probably going to be rejected, without having an audience?

She stepped away from the window.

"I'm mad, though," she told Peeta, voice still insistent with frustration. "Katniss was acting like I'd done something wrong."

"I thought she seemed pissed at Gale, not you. She was looking out for you."

Madge wasn't sure she agreed with that. Katniss was protective, yes, absolutely, but to Madge it had seemed like Katniss was, probably not even consciously, using her concern for Madge as a cover for her jealousy and suspicion-laced reaction to seeing Gale with Madge. The fact that Madge was confident Katniss would never go out of her way to hurt her did dampen her anger a bit, but only a little. She still felt like collateral damage in someone else's war.

"She lumped me into her... issues with him," Madge said huffily.

Peeta's eyes drifted to the window, but he was standing too far away to see the patio below and returned his focus to Madge. "Do you think she really _is_ jealous?" he asked with a frown. "I mean, it did kind of look like he was flirting with you."

"He wasn't," Madge snapped, irritated both at Peeta's skeptical expression and how he was so dismissive of Madge's frustration with Katniss.

"She's never seemed jealous of me, though," Peeta continued in a troubled tone. Then with a hopeful expression he added, "unless she _has..._?"

Madge shook her head. Peeta was Madge's friend originally so Katniss hadn't had any reason to be jealous of the time he spent with her. Katniss had just become more noticeably interested whenever Madge mentioned that she'd been hanging out with Peeta, or if Peeta was meeting them in the dining hall or joining them for TV night or a party.

Looking out the window again, Madge saw that Gale was alone, sitting in one of the lawn chairs with his head in his hands. He was as still as the stone lions keeping watch over the back yard at the edge of the patio.

"Katniss isn't there anymore," she reported quietly. "Just Gale."

Apparently deeming it acceptable to look now, Peeta joined Madge at the window. She didn't need to translate Gale's dejected body language for him. Gale looked smaller, somehow, and Madge was hit with a wave of relief that she hadn't actually listened in on their conversation. She felt guilty to even be witnessing this much of Gale's discomfort and stepped away from the window, firmly tugging the curtain back into its original position.

Unsurprisingly, Peeta's thoughts were with Katniss. "Do you think she left the party?"

"I'm sure she wants to, but Gale was her ride home," Madge said. “She’s probably holed up in one of the empty rooms downstairs, deciding what to do.”  Katniss could stay in hiding until her mom was ready to go home, to avoid having to explain why she wasn’t leaving with Gale, or maybe claim sickness or recruit Prim for assistance. Under other circumstances, Madge would already be searching out her friend and trying to help her. But Madge couldn't leave the party to give Katniss a ride home, and more than that, the memory of Katniss's suspicious glare still felt like a slap. Madge wasn't sure she felt forgiving enough just yet to bite her tongue from saying something like, "Thanks for being suspicious and taking out your confusion on me.”

Peeta must have also been considering Katniss's options because he announced, "I'll give her a ride home."

"You can't make your move now," Madge admonished. "She's confused—"

" _Madge_." Peeta seemed offended. "I know that." He patted the pockets of his suit to locate his keys. "She needs a friend tonight and that's all I'll be: her no-talking-necessary taxi driver."

Even though he hadn't meant it as a dig, it hurt to hear Peeta say that Katniss needed a friend, because the implication was that Madge—who was Katniss's friend more so than Peeta—couldn't be the friend that Katniss needed tonight.

Following Peeta back into the hallway, Madge also felt unsettled because as well as she felt like she knew Katniss, she couldn't predict Katniss's reaction to this situation, beyond trying to get away from it. Would Katniss even know that Madge was upset with her? They'd never fought as roommates—Katniss was barely around and didn't care about the state of the room as long as Madge's messes didn't infringe on her space. They hadn't fought before college either, at least in part due to having gone to different high schools. No boys had ever come between them; they barely talked about boys. Katniss never seemed to have any crushes, and Madge hadn't had any serious boyfriends worth talking about until Greg (who she still wasn't sure should count as serious... seriously awful, maybe). Madge had always made an effort to keep her comments about Peeta as neutral as possible, or, if she couldn't resist, just barely hinting at her awareness of Katniss having a possible crush; she hadn't wanted to scare Katniss away from him or make her feel self-conscious.

Madge walked with Peeta to the top of the stairs, eyeing the party below in the foyer with a heavy feeling in her chest. She really didn't want to have to go back. The band had shifted to dancing music, and an upbeat, modern Christmas song filled the house, a complete mismatch with Madge's mood. A few dozen guests were dancing boisterously near the band, though most people were visiting and networking just below the grand stairway, forming a loud, alcohol-fueled sea of bodies.

As Peeta started down the stairs, Madge called out to him, "Check the conference room. She likes the big fish tank by the door." Katniss found the brightly colored fish soothing; she said they reminded her of an aquarium her father had taken her to when she was younger.

"Got it," he said with a grateful smile, turning and jogging down the remaining stairs.

Seeing how preoccupied Peeta was with Katniss's well-being made Madge feel lonely in the familiar way that being in her house often left her. Her time at school had been a break from that particular type of isolation, and Greg, jerk that he turned out to be, had been part of that break, though that had backfired horribly. Madge was tempted to retreat to her bedroom for the rest of the party, but she knew she'd never get away with it. She needed to talk to her high school classmates, keep an eye on her mother, and generally be visible as a supportive daughter. Gale's suggestion that she break the puppet strings her parents had attached to her was all well and good, but she wasn't going to jeopardize tonight, something her whole family had worked so hard and for so long to orchestrate.

Still, maybe the world wouldn't end if she put off diving into the party for just a little while longer...

She had a good vantage point from the landing at the top of the stairs. She could see her father talking to an older man with white hair, while her mother was in the process of helping a middle-aged couple retrieve their coats from the coat-check. Madge searched her mother's face for any signs of strain, but she seemed to be holding up all right.

From experience, Madge knew it was going to be a long night. The political types weren't going anywhere while there was alcohol to be consumed and networking to be accomplished. Half the state legislature was in the Undersees' living room and people were no doubt lobbying under the mistletoe. Madge leaned against the banister, watching and letting her mind wander back to the scene on the patio. Why did she end up confiding in Gale Hawthorne _again_? Was it just because he seemed so far removed from her everyday life? No, it was more than that. For some reason, despite making it clear on numerous occasions that he was no fan of hers, he seemed to actually listen to her, unlike her parents, or even Peeta tonight. What did that say, when some guy she barely knew paid more attention to her than the people who were supposedly closest to her did?

Madge lingered on the landing for as long as she could, but eventually, in between schmoozing sessions, Kevin looked up and caught her eye. He waved and raised his eyebrows in a question: was she all right?

Pasting on a smile, Madge waved back and slowly descended the stairs.

#

Madge couldn't have guessed how much time had passed before she finally got a chance to talk to one of her family members. An hour? More? The throng of guests wasn't as thick anymore, though the band was still playing. She had migrated into the living room where her high school classmates were congregated, and chatted her way through at least two refill glasses of sparkling water before she caught Maysilee's eye. Her aunt was wrapping up a conversation across the room and afterward wove her way over to Madge.

"You hanging in there, kiddo?" Maysilee asked quietly as she put her arm around Madge's shoulder. "Your absence was noted earlier."

Madge translated: her mother had complained about Madge's post-announcement disappearance to Maysilee, who more often than not ran interference between mother and daughter.

"I told you all that I didn't have time for that student group," Madge said in a low tone while trying not to visibly frown. "Undergrads for Undersee. Which, by the way, is an embarrassingly bad name."

Maysilee looked surprised. "Haymitch didn't talk to you?" She pursed her lips, her similarity to Madge's mother never more apparent, as that was one of Mrs. Undersee's signature expressions. "We had an emergency with another client this afternoon; he must have been tied up with that. I'm sorry, Madge. He was going to tell you that your involvement can be minimal. _Very_ minimal. He found a senior on campus to run the group. You'll just need to show up every once in a while. That's it."

That didn't sound like much of an improvement. "So I'll be the jerk who drops in at the last second and takes credit for everything?" Madge couldn't stand those types of people, though admittedly she hated the idea of organizing this group even more.

Maysilee seemed unconcerned. "You don't have to take credit for anything, just go to their meetings and events occasionally. The girl who'll be running the group won't care, believe me. She gets it: if she does well with this, she's a shoo-in to get on the campaign staff this summer after she graduates. A paid position on a campaign for the future governor is nothing to sneeze at. If she's really good, she might even be able to leverage it into a role in your father's administration when he's elected."

"Someone should have talked to me first," Madge said, still not comfortable with the idea. "And my dad—he didn't seem to know about this either."

"He was in budget negotiations all day so we didn't get a chance to go over this again with him," Maysilee admitted. "You know how delicate those budgets talks can be. And hon, it's been crazy getting ready for this evening. We've all had so much to do. Getting the website ready, donor lists, press kits... After this party we'll hopefully have more money and be able to hire more staff to help, but until then we're operating on a shoestring."

More staff. So the staff could talk to Madge instead of, heaven forbid, her father. "Why even bother having me fake-involved with this school group, though?" she asked. It seemed like a lot of fuss and effort for something that was apparently going to happen whether or not Madge participated.

"It's not fake involvement," Maysilee corrected. "You're a busy college student, but you want to support your father however you can. Everyone understands that. And it's worth it because people are curious about you, Madge. With the national buzz around your father, they're wondering if you're the next Chelsea. And you can be quite charming when you want to—you could really help your father's numbers." Noticing Madge's stony expression, she added in a conciliatory tone, "We'll make sure to talk to him and Haymitch about it tomorrow. Iron out these communication issues."

How could Madge protest without coming off like a self-involved brat, exactly what people like Gale already thought of her? She could see that Maysilee really thought they'd come up with a sensible solution to the Madge Problem. Her aunt turned her attention back to the rest of the party, not expecting further protest from Madge. And obviously this was not the time or place to talk about Madge's objections, but as Madge swallowed her hurt once again she wondered when _would_ be a good time. She'd heard a lot of promises of "tomorrow" in her life, and the word didn't seem to mean what her family thought it did. It also wasn't like the pace of life was going to slow down now that the campaign was officially public.

"Huh. Look at that," Maysilee said, focused on the opposite side of the foyer. Madge followed her aunt's gaze to Haymitch, who was standing near the coat check at the front door.

Inhaling sharply, Madge realized what had snagged Maysilee's attention: Haymitch was talking to Gale, who apparently hadn't left the party yet. With a pang, Madge remembered that to get back to his truck out front Gale would have had to come inside the house since a security gate in the yard prevented passage between the front and back yards.

" _What_ is Haymitch doing?" Madge whispered, dread already flowing through her.

Maysilee sipped her wine, eyes on her husband. "Probably playing the concerned uncle card, making sure your new friend is worthy of you." Glancing at Madge, she added with a sly smile, "Don't worry, anyone who could get under your mother's skin that quickly starts out with his approval." She pulled Madge's hand onto her crooked arm like an escort. "Come on. You can introduce me, too."

Madge let herself be led across the room, eyes glued to her uncle and Gale. She wasn't surprised to see that they were mirroring each other's posture, locked in identical standoffish stances: arms crossed, wary expressions. The surprising part was that Gale hadn't outright bolted from the party and actually seemed to be the one talking. He uncrossed his arms and made a few complicated gestures with his hands. It looked to Madge like he was describing something mechanical. Haymitch had a gift for getting other people to talk—Madge had learned her own skills in that department from him—and clearly had figured out something Gale didn't mind conversing about. Trucks? Mining? The fine art of scowling?

Haymitch must have spotted Maysilee and Madge approaching out of the corner of his eye because he turned in their direction. Releasing Madge, Maysilee slid one hand up Haymitch's arm and palmed the lapel of his suit jacket with the other, whispering something into his ear with a smile.

Madge was at the perfect angle to see the look of shock on Gale's face.

"My aunt," she explained quickly, as Maysilee smiled faux innocently. "My mom's twin," Madge added testily. You'd think a woman in her 40s would have grown sick of playing twin-fake-out on unsuspecting victims, but Maysilee always gleefully claimed that she'd keep it up until she and her sister were in adjoining nursing home rooms.

Gale seemed relieved but still suspicious as he shook Maysilee's hand and listened to her introduce herself. "It's a pleasure, Gale," Maysilee said more seriously. "I've heard good things about you from Ivy Everdeen."

Madge felt bad for Gale at being bombarded from all angles by people who knew more about him than he did about them. First there was Haymitch, and now his wife, a clone of Madge's mother, saying she knew of him through Katniss's mother. Poor Gale was like a fly caught in a web he couldn't see.

"My mom and aunt went to college with Katniss's mom," Madge hastily clarified.

Before Gale could do anything with that information, Maysilee continued. "We figured out afterward that you were the one who gave Madge a ride the other day. Thanks again for getting her home."

"No problem," Gale said with a creased brow and a glance in Madge's direction.

He had to be completely bewildered, Madge thought, and was probably just trying to break free from the party, not sort out why Madge's aunt seemed to think well of him while Madge's mother didn't. Well, he didn't need to bother himself pondering it. Madge cleared her throat and stepped forward.

"It looks like Gale is trying to get home. We shouldn't keep him."

"Of course not," Maysilee agreed, patting Haymitch's chest, her cue to him to start to leave.

But Haymitch kept his eyes trained on Gale. "You still registered to vote here?"

"Yes, sir."

Haymitch flinched at the "sir" and Madge worried he was about to give Gale his lecture about how Madge's father was the "sir" while Haymitch was more of a "hey you." Instead Haymitch nodded toward the house and asked, "You supporting Bruce in the primary this May?"

"I don't know yet," Gale said coolly, re-crossing his arms over his chest.

Haymitch raised his eyebrows and shot a subtle questioning glance at Madge.

She stepped closer to Gale, partially shielding him from Haymitch. "Gale needs to get home," she said firmly. She could at least spare him from being harassed about the election or having to talk about his father's history in the mine and why he didn't like Madge's father.

But Gale didn't seem interested in leaving. Still watching Haymitch, he said in a challenging tone, "Isn't Undersee the first to officially declare? I'll need to see the whole field, hear what his positions are. It was all pretty vague tonight."

Madge noticed Maysilee take a sip of wine to hide her smile, while Haymitch just nodded solemnly and eyed Gale closely, assessing him. Haymitch didn't say anything right away and Madge was tempted to jump in again, but she'd already tried twice to give Gale an out. He seemed determined to seek out confrontations.

"The campaign website should go live tomorrow," Haymitch finally said, turning his head toward Maysilee for confirmation. She nodded. He handed Gale a business card. "Address is on here. You want to know his positions, they're all there. Take a look."

Gale accepted the card with a frown, and then carefully put it in a leather wallet so worn Madge was amazed it was still intact. She waited for Haymitch to say something else, or for Maysilee to speak up again, but they stayed silent, both observing Gale.

Finally Haymitch stepped forward to grasp Gale's shoulder. "Good talking to you, Hawthorne. Stay safe out there on that rig."

With that, he signaled to Maysilee that he was done. She said good-bye to Gale and told Madge that she'd catch up with her later that night. Madge nodded in recognition that they were trying to leave her with Gale, but wished she could make her exit as well. It was painfully obvious that Gale had been a topic of conversation around the Undersee household.

"It's like you have four parents," Gale said, watching Haymitch and Maysilee walk away and be reabsorbed into the party.

And yet the four didn't seem to add up to a full set, at least not during a campaign, Madge thought. Not that she'd say that to Gale. She just smiled grimly and held her arm out in the direction of the front door. "Come on," she said, gesturing him forward. "You should leave before anyone else in my family bugs you." Pausing, she almost didn't ask, but then decided she'd rather know. "Did... my mother say anything to you?"

"Not with words."

Madge grimaced, able to picture perfectly the expression her mother had probably turned on Gale. "She saw you come here with Katniss. I could see her being... confused."

Gale made a barely audible snorting noise and muttered, "She wouldn't be the only one who's confused tonight."

They reached the front door, which Madge opened and ushered Gale through before her mother could see them together again. Whenever other people were confused lately, Madge seemed to be the one to suffer.

Gale took the door and wedged his shoe against it, propping it open. "Did you talk to Katniss before she left?"

Madge heard a vulnerable note in his voice, below the gruffness. She quickly shook her head in response, but didn't add anything. The less she said about Katniss, and her own reaction to Katniss's implied accusation about Gale flirting with her, the better.

Still standing in the doorway, Gale said, "I saw her leave with that blond guy. They were in one of the rooms back there—" he gestured toward the rear of the house—"and made a break for it. But you probably knew all about that, didn't you?"

And just like that, he'd shifted gears back into attacking her. After she'd gone out of her way to try to help him get away from Haymitch and Maysilee. After he had been halfway decent to her earlier, confusing her yet again about how much of a jerk he truly was. Apparently still a pretty big jerk.

She glared at him. "Why do you always find a way to blame me for everything? It's a special skill you _really_ shouldn't be proud of. And I _do not_ need any more problems tonight, especially now that Katniss thinks—" She cut herself off as she noticed people nearby turning to look at her. Her voice must have been louder than she realized. She and Gale were also blocking the front door.

Nudging Gale the rest of the way through the door to the front porch, Madge was about to continue berating him when she realized she'd forgotten about the valets waiting to retrieve guests' vehicles. Two boys her age dressed in maroon vests and green elf hats leapt to their feet.

"Miss Undersee?"

"I'm not leaving," she said quickly, dropping her hand from Gale's arm. She hadn't even realized she'd been touching him. "My friend needs his car. Truck. It's, um, sort of brownish." She looked at Gale, anger fading into embarrassment again. "I don't know what model it is. To tell them so they can get it."

Gale glanced at the valet stand where the keys dangled and started walking towards it. "I can get it myself."

"Uh, sir," the closest valet said, following Gale to the stand, "actually we'll probably need to move other cars first to get it."

Looking out along the intricate puzzle of double-parked vehicles lining the Undersees' long drive, Gale seemed to reluctantly acknowledge that he wouldn't be able to make a clean escape. Instead, he just pointed out which keys on the stand were his. The valets quickly conferred and then grabbed a few other key rings and rushed off to move vehicles.

"I think I played Little League with that guy getting my truck," Gale mumbled when the valets were out of hearing distance. "Do I have to tip him? I'll feel like an asshole if I do."

Madge gave Gale a tight smile. "Well, do you think he'd rather have money, or the pleasant experience of reminiscing with you about Little League? Which would you want?"

Gale exhaled loudly and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, opening it a crack to peek at how much cash he had. Madge relaxed when she spotted a few bills; he'd be able to tip. Then he shoved his wallet back into his pocket and rubbed his face with his hands, making a low, frustrated sound.

"Sorry," he said, voice muffled by his hands. He pulled his hands away and exhaled loudly, staring at a fixed point of nothingness on the ground. "For before. I didn't mean to give you a hard time. I just... need this night to be over." He peered down the driveway to check on the valet's progress.

"At least you can leave," Madge muttered.

Gale looked over at her, and after a pause, smiled ruefully, eyes crinkling. He had a beautiful smile, even half-hearted like this one, and for a moment Madge forgot that she didn't like him.

"You _could_ leave," he said. Something about his gentler tone and the way he was watching her so closely for her reaction made Madge wonder if he was inviting her to leave with him. Tonight. The way she'd wanted to do the last time they were both standing on this driveway, after giving her a ride home from school. Then it occurred to her that he'd probably intentionally been vague to see how she'd take it.

"My car's still being repaired," Madge said, volleying his vagueness back at him. She could see him trying to figure out if she was implying anything, squinting at her ever so slightly as though she were a puzzle.

Did it count as him flirting with her if he was vague? Did it count if she was vague back? What about if he talked to her like a normal person? What if his voice was softer than she'd ever heard from him before, a comforting sort of rumble? What if he was looking at her like he might actually enjoy her company?

Would Katniss think it was flirting?

Madge tore her eyes away from his. Katniss _would_ think it was flirting.

Gale seemed to have had a similar thought because he took a step back and gestured to the collection of parked vehicles lining the drive. "Plenty of cars here to borrow." Jerking his head in the direction of the valet stand, he said, "You could nab some keys while I distract my buddy with stories about the good old days."

"Tempting," Madge said lightly, not letting on how truly tempting the idea was as she watched the valets undo their intricate parking arrangements. Driving off with Gale—this pleasant incarnation of him, who'd seemed to have been on the verge of inviting her to leave with him—was starting to feel like something she'd want to do for fun, not just to escape. She couldn't leave the party, of course, so it was out of the question. But she felt vaguely guilty as she thought about how that practical reason—not being able to ditch the party—had popped into her head well before remembering that Katniss would probably flip out if Madge went somewhere with Gale tonight. It was just becoming easier and easier to see why someone might appreciate his company...

Which may have been exactly what Katniss was concerned about. Was Katniss right that Madge was vulnerable after the Greg fiasco? Some guy smiles at her and listens to what she has to say and that's it, she wants to drive off with him?

While Madge was distracted with her thoughts, the heavy rumbling of an engine signaled the arrival of Gale's truck. Madge crossed her arms against the cold as Gale and the valet awkwardly exchanged keys and cash. Then, as Gale moved to climb into his seat, he paused and looked back at Madge.

"I didn't mean to get you in trouble with Katniss." He frowned as he heard his words and added with a shake of his head, "I also don't feel like I should be apologizing for something she said, but—"

Madge cut him off with a hand wave. "You shouldn't. Don't." But that was as much as she'd say against Katniss to Gale.

He seemed to understand and nodded curtly. "You going to be okay with her?"

Madge shrugged. Probably, but not yet.

"Don't be too hard on her," Gale said. "Her problem is with me, not you."

Madge hugged her arms more tightly to her chest. She needed to get inside soon. "What are _you_ going to do?" she asked him.

Gale looked down at his key ring, which Madge could see from a distance was a battered, plastic replica of a lynx, the mascot for Gale and Katniss’s high school. "Give her some time, I guess. Not that I have much of it here before I leave..." he added bitterly. After a few more moments of contemplating his key chain, he snapped his head up and climbed into the truck, closing the door and rolling down his window. Resting his elbow on the window, he watched Madge, seconds dragging out longer and longer. He looked more contemplative than angry, and Madge was struck again by the thought that when he wasn't scowling or unfairly blaming her for things, he had the potential to be a decent guy, the kind of friend it was good to have on your side.

"Hang in there, Madge," he finally said. "Campaigns don't last forever."

She smiled sadly—both because he was wrong and because he didn't know it—before waving good-bye as he started the truck and rolled up his window.


	11. Not Talking

The morning after the party, Madge woke up early so she could catch her parents before they were sucked into campaign meetings. She wanted to confront them about the lame student group idea while the frustration was still hot in her mind, and mentally rehearsed her speech as she foraged in the refrigerator for party leftovers she could eat for breakfast.

She would be firm but supportive. They needed to understand that they should talk to her directly about her involvement in the campaign. They couldn't be disappointed in her about that, could they?

To help show that she wasn't being unreasonably selfish, she started a pot of coffee for them. While she nibbled on nearly-stale leftover dinner rolls and waited for the coffee, Madge turned on the kitchen TV for company and checked her phone to read the press coverage of her father's candidacy announcement. The Daily Sentinel had a short, perfunctory story, with an accompanying photo of the three Undersees on the stairs. Squinting at the tiny picture, Madge was mildly annoyed to see that her family _did_ look picturesque, thanks to her mother's careful wardrobe planning. Worse, though, were the accompanying reports of her involvement in the campaign, the reporter employing clichés like "the apple not falling far from the tree" and describing how Madge was "following in her father's footsteps." Madge skimmed a few other local newspaper websites and political blogs, but they all just rehashed the campaign's press release. The coverage was remarkable only for being unremarkable; nobody seemed surprised by the announcement. Madge's father was clearly the frontrunner and the real news would be if someone with a chance of challenging him entered the race.

When the coffee was ready, Madge poured two steaming mugs, doctored them the way her parents liked, and then carried them upstairs to her parents' bedroom suite. The door was open so she knocked... only to discover that the entire suite was vacant. Lights off, bed made in that half-hearted way her mother did on days when the cleaners were scheduled, closet doors open...

Where were they?

Madge set the coffee mugs on the end table near the sofa and pulled out her phone to call her father. Voice mail. Same with her mother's number. She couldn't reach Maysilee or Haymitch either, though she knew they were hunkered down with the IT consultant this morning, working on the campaign website. Embarrassment building, she finally dialed the number for Ruth Ann, her father's assistant, who luckily did pick up.

"I think they had lunch scheduled with a potential donor over at the club in White Oak Valley," Ruth Ann reported apologetically, clearly aware that she wouldn't have been the first person Madge called. "This man is only in town for the weekend," Ruth Ann added. "They want to lock him in while they have momentum. He's very influential."

Madge could almost hear her father enthusiastically telling her mother how important it was to "strike while the iron was hot," as though he needed to convince her. He didn't.

"Do you know when they'll be back?" Madge asked in a small voice.

"Probably late," Ruth Ann admitted. "They have some other meetings this afternoon and are staying for the club's holiday banquet tonight."

Madge thanked Ruth Ann and hung up, more upset than she wanted to acknowledge. Her parents had barely talked to her since she came home from school, unless it was about the campaign, and even that they delegated to others. She felt her throat starting to get tight. Her eyes fell to the two mugs of coffee on the table and she had the urge to hurl them at the wall. Wouldn't it be satisfying to hear the ceramic shattering, to see dark brown liquid staining the eggshell carpet and historic wallpaper? Her parents would _have_ to ask why she'd been so destructive, would have to realize all was not well.

Her phone rang, pulling Madge out of her fantasy. Had her parents seen that they'd missed a call from her? Remembered they hadn't told her where they'd be today?

No. The name on the screen was Katniss.

Madge was so surprised, she stared at the phone until the ring tone started its second cycle. Then she hesitantly answered.

"Katniss?"

"Hi." Katniss's voice sounded uneasy, like she was unsure of Madge's frame of mind. "Do you have a second?"

Madge had loads of seconds. An entire day. An entire winter break. "Yeah."

"Peeta said you might be upset," Katniss blurted. "With me," she added. Then she paused and Madge couldn't tell if she was waiting for Madge to confirm that she was upset, but before Madge could speak Katniss plowed ahead, her words tumbling out. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I know you wouldn't do anything with Gale—not that you _couldn't_ —I mean, you can do what you want and so can he—but I didn't think it would be a good _idea_ for you, and I guess it didn't come out that way. But... I didn't mean for you to feel bad."

"I know you didn't," Madge said quickly, anxious to put Katniss out of her misery, any lingering frustration with her friend evaporating. "But thanks for calling to tell me." She could almost hear Katniss's relief and said a mental thank you to Peeta for steering Katniss toward calling. To Katniss she asked gently, "Are you okay? Peeta and I were worried."

Katniss didn't answer right away. Eventually she said, "Everything's... weird." She didn't elaborate, and before Madge could think of a way to get her to explain, Katniss asked, "What about you? How are you... about the campaign?"

Madge felt a wave of gratitude that Katniss had asked. She related the Undergrads for Undersee debacle, and how she still hadn't been able to talk to her parents about it. Katniss understood immediately Madge's discomfort, and expressed the right amount of outrage at the situation, which felt good to hear. Katniss _got it_ about Madge's family and the campaign. She reminded Madge of Gale, actually, and how he'd such been a good listener the night before—the only person willing to listen to her—and she took a moment to appreciate both Katniss and Gale. They both had a certain intensity about them, and Madge had seen a glimpse of it last night with Gale: when he was listening, he was really listening, like Katniss.

"And now they're gone again for the whole day and I didn't even know," Madge said dully. "I had to call my dad's assistant to find out where they were."

There had been over 300 people in her house last night, and this morning it was just Madge and the TV in the kitchen. Later the house cleaners would be arriving for the post-party cleanup, which wasn't exactly a comfort. Madge got the feeling they didn't like an audience while they worked, so she'd have to keep moving from room to room to avoid them.

"What're you doing today?" Katniss asked.

Madge sat down delicately on the edge of her parents' bed and stared glumly at the glass sculpture on her mother's nightstand. "Practicing, I guess. I still haven't picked a song for my audition." Guilt pricked her, but she swatted it away. She had bigger problems at the moment.

"If you want some company, you could come over," Katniss offered hesitantly.

"Really?" Madge asked. Usually Katniss visited Madge's house, not the other way around. But even the idea of retreating to Katniss's cozy little home in Twelve Springs lifted Madge's mood. Prim and Mrs. Everdeen were always happy to see Madge, too.

"I'm at work now," Katniss said, "but my shift will be over at 3, so anytime after that."

Maybe there was hope for the day yet.

#

Katniss and Madge spent the afternoon and evening consuming unholy amounts of Christmas movies, Christmas cookies, and flavored popcorn. Prim and some of her friends had gone on a baking spree, and one of Mrs. Everdeen's coworkers had given her a giant popcorn tin. All the treats were strewn across the Everdeens' coffee table, while Katniss and Madge sprawled on the couch in front of the TV.

"Get that thing _away_ ," Madge groaned as she nudged the never-ending popcorn canister with her foot. "I don't think I'll be hungry again until next Christmas."

Katniss grabbed another handful of caramel popcorn and shoved it into her mouth. "Mmmmm," she said as she chewed exaggeratedly toward Madge, taunting her. "I wish we had _more_."

Madge made a face at her friend and rubbed her hands over her belly, which looked pregnant with popcorn. Gross. She sat up, grabbed her water glass and Katniss's, and dragged herself into the Everdeens' cramped kitchen. The dim overhead light made the worn, checkered linoleum look even older than it probably was, but gave the room a cozy glow, a welcome contrast to the pitch black of the backyard.

A glance at the clock above the microwave confirmed that it was after 9:00 p.m. now, still probably too early for her parents to be home from the country club. Her mother had finally called in the late afternoon to let Madge know they wouldn't be home for dinner. Mrs. Undersee had sounded tired, and frustrated because the donor they were courting was holding out on committing funding and other donors were waiting to follow his lead. Madge could hear her father in the background on another call on his own phone, no doubt doing more fundraising. She had tried to tell her mother that she needed to talk to them about her role in the campaign, only to be answered with a tense sigh and a long rant about how booked their schedule was, since they were trying to squeeze in as many appointments as possible before everyone stopped taking meetings for the holidays. Maybe, her mother offered wearily, there would be time to talk in the car on the drive to Aunt Emily's for Christmas.

A regular Christmas miracle to look forward to.

Madge had dropped it.

She knew Katniss had overheard the conversation—she'd taken the call in the kitchen but the Everdeen house was small—and was grateful that Katniss hadn't said anything. There really wasn't anything _to_ say. "Sorry your parents are too busy for you unless there's a press event" wasn't something Madge especially wanted to hear. When she returned, Katniss had simply handed Madge the remote and said, "You're in charge." A small comfort, but Madge had been grateful.

And still was, Madge thought as she filled their glasses with water. On her way back to the living room, she paused in front of the Everdeens' refrigerator. Nearly the entire surface of the door was plastered with holiday cards, family snapshots, and press clippings of Katniss's races; it was nothing like the Undersees' double-sized stainless steel contraption that made Madge feel like she was stealing from a restaurant whenever she wanted a snack.

Without realizing she was looking for him, Madge located a picture of Gale on one of the holiday cards. He was surrounded by several dark-haired kids, a middle-aged woman with smile lines around her eyes, and a scary-looking dog wearing a neon pink collar. Surprisingly, Gale actually looked happy. On closer inspection, Madge noticed that the card was from the previous year, before his knee injury, which might have explained his broad smile.

Seeing the lighter, happier version of Gale left Madge with a vague sense of loss. He'd directed that smile at her last night, and she probably wouldn't see him again during his trip home. He lived near Katniss—just a few blocks, if Madge remembered correctly—but he might as well have been back in North Dakota for all the likelihood of Madge encountering him again, especially after the way Katniss had reacted last night.

She and Katniss hadn't talked about Gale since Madge had arrived. Or Peeta, though he’d texted Madge last night to let her know that he'd successfully driven Katniss home and hadn't been anything other than a supportive friend. Madge figured that as far "making his move" that was actually a pretty smart one, at least as a long-term strategy.

Returning to the living room, Madge found Katniss smiling softly as she scrolled through messages on her phone.

"Water?" Madge said, placing the glass for Katniss on a coaster.

"Thanks," Katniss said, coloring faintly and leaning forward to place her phone on the coffee table. She emptied her water glass in a few determined gulps.

Had Katniss been reading texts from Peeta? He was the only person Madge had ever seen who could inspire the type of smile she’d just seen on her friend, a uniquely Katniss blend of shyness and surprise at the attention directed toward her.

Madge hesitated before sitting on her side of the couch again as a thought occurred to her. "Do you have something else going on tonight? I don't need to stay overnight; I could go home."

Katniss looked confused. "No, just hanging out with you." She followed Madge's gaze to her phone, sitting expectantly on the coffee table, and roughly returned it into the pouch of her hooded sweatshirt. "I was just looking at something from earlier. It's nothing." Katniss nodded toward the remote, waiting on Madge's cushion. "What's on next?"

Curling her knees under her blanket, Madge settled back onto her end of the couch and started skimming through the channels, relieved Katniss wasn't going to ditch her tonight. Was that selfish? Madge felt a twinge of guilt for thinking it. Glancing at Katniss out of the corner of her eye, she thought her friend _seemed_ all right with a quiet girls' night in, not visibly itching to be elsewhere.

"There," Katniss said, pointing at the TV. The screen had filled with the bright, cartoon colors of a scene from _The Grinch Who Stole Christmas_.

Madge shook her head and kept channel surfing. It was a contender, but it was too close to the end. The Grinch was already getting nicer. Someone should remake the movie and let the Grinch _stay_ grinchy. She could really go for that tonight.

After at least one full cycle through all the channels, Katniss's phone pinged, the text message alert dulled but still insistent through Katniss's sweatshirt. Katniss yanked her phone out of her pocket, but then frowned and stowed it away again without responding.

Madge had stopped flicking through the channels to watch Katniss, and must have looked curious because Katniss said in a flat tone: "Gale."

Madge frowned, still holding the remote aloft and watching her friend rather than the TV. "Have you talked to him?"

Katniss shook her head in a way that suggested the idea was absurd.

"Isn't he going back to North Dakota soon?"

Katniss shifted uncomfortably and made a vaguely affirmative sound.

Madge felt a surge of irritation on Gale's behalf. She lowered the remote to her lap and turned toward Katniss, who was watching her with a guarded expression. She didn't _want_ to get into the touchy topic that was Gale Hawthorne—Madge had been grateful to get out of her house and not have to think about her parents or the campaign for a little while, and figured Katniss probably needed a break from her boy complications—but it was hard to hold her tongue when Katniss's handling of her problems hurt other people.

"Gale saw you and Peeta leaving my house together last night," Madge announced, formally ending the no-talking-about-Katniss's-Gale-and-Peeta-problem grace period. She explained how Gale had been forced to go back into the Undersees' house to leave through the front door because of the security fence in the back yard.

"Oh." Katniss went quiet and looked down at her lap. "How... did he seem?"

Madge thought back to Gale sitting in his truck in her driveway, watching her before driving away.

"Tired," she said. "Resigned." Like a warrior who'd lost. Like an adult with problems, a far cry from the smiling boy in the Christmas card on Katniss's refrigerator.

Katniss winced. She fiddled with a black digital sports watch on her wrist for a few moments and then said softly, "I guess he started to have... feelings for me?" She sounded like she was reporting that Gale had contracted an embarrassing infection.

"Do you like him?" Madge asked quietly.

"Of course I do, he's one of my best friends." Katniss's response was automatic, robotic.

"You know what I mean."

Katniss paused and then said mournfully, "I don't know." She sounded utterly defeated, which for her probably meant thinking that she'd let someone down. But who was that, Madge wondered. Gale? Or, possibly, Peeta? It hurt to think that Katniss was beating up on herself for feeling, or not feeling, a certain way.

"Are you _sure_ you don't know?" Madge asked gently so Katniss would understand that Madge was trying to help her, not attack her. "Or is it that you do know and don't want to tell him?"

Katniss didn't respond right away, which to Madge's ears was an answer in itself. She watched her friend tug on her watch, buckling it and unbuckling it. A television commercial for a last-minute Christmas sale shrieked in the background.

Eventually Katniss just shrugged helplessly and Madge decided not to press any further. This was the longest conversation they'd ever had about boys and Katniss was clearly uncomfortable. Madge turned her eyes back toward the TV and cruised through channels until she stumbled across _Bad Santa_.

There. That should do it. The least syrupy, most aggressively inappropriate Christmas movie available. Madge looked over at Katniss, who grimaced but shrugged in acceptance. Madge smiled gratefully and nestled against the arm of the couch.

#

That night, Madge tried—and failed—to fall asleep on the camping air mattresses they'd set up on the floor of Katniss's bedroom. While she'd take the physical discomforts of an air mattress over the cold isolation of her own house any day, the real problem keeping her awake was her frustration with her parents. What if she just stayed at Katniss's house indefinitely? Would her parents notice? Probably only when her mother realized that Madge was still borrowing her car, since Madge's car was being repaired near campus.

Katniss's voice broke through the darkness of the room, quiet and hesitant.

"Madge, can I ask you something about Greg?"

Even hearing his name made Madge flinch. She'd been doing her best not to think about him, and had largely been successful.

"I guess so," she said. Was thinking about Greg better, or worse, than thinking about her parents?

"How did you know you liked him? Before you guys got together."

Madge tensed, bracing herself for another round of what-on-earth-was-I-thinking Greg-related regrets. But as she combed through her memories, she realized they didn't hurt as much as she thought they would. As terrible as Greg turned out to be, the beginning _had_ been good: thrilling, and, unlike the perpetual dance that Katniss and Peeta seemed to be caught in, Madge hadn't agonized about whether or not she liked Greg or whether he liked her back. It was obvious, to both of them.

"I didn't think a lot about it," she finally said, eyes on the glow-in-the-dark constellation stickers scattered across Katniss’s ceiling. "I was just... happier when I was around him. I couldn't wait to run into him in class or in the practice rooms. Everything was a little more exciting if I thought I might see him."

And now, the thought of him—and how things had turned out—made her want to throw something. She scrunched her eyes shut, and willed herself to think of something else. Anything else. Anyone else.

An image of Gale popped into her mind, the smiling Gale from last night and from Katniss's refrigerator. Madge opened her eyes and gazed toward the window. Which direction was his house? What was he doing? What _did_ he do, now that he wasn't running and wasn't in school? Was he bored? How was he dealing with Katniss ignoring him?

"What are you going to do about Gale?" she asked Katniss, the question escaping before she had a chance to edit herself.

There was a delay, as though Katniss's thoughts had been elsewhere and it took her a moment to recognize that Madge had asked her a question.

"He's leaving soon," Katniss said slowly. "We'll get back to normal after he leaves. We can forget about all this."

Madge was grateful for the darkness, so Katniss wouldn't see her cringe at that plan. What was "normal" for Katniss and Gale, anyway, now that they weren't in high school or running together anymore?

"So... ignore everything? Not talk about any of it?"

"I don't know what I could say to him that wouldn't make him feel worse," Katniss said defensively. "I just want us to stay friends."

"Friends talk," Madge said quietly.

"Gale and I understand each other. I don't need to tell him things; he knows."

"I knew, too," Madge countered, pushing up on her elbow and looking in the dark toward where Katniss's head probably was. "I knew you didn't _mean_ to hurt me last night, that you were concerned about me and it probably just came out sideways. But I still felt weird about it and I feel a lot better now."

"It's different with Gale," Katniss insisted. "If we don't talk, he'll know what that means: that we should just go back to how we were before." Madge could hear the stubbornness in Katniss's words, the same tone she took when she was talking about needing to shave some time off one of her events, or beat a rival on a competing team. "I can't hurt him," Katniss said adamantly.

"Fine," Madge said, flopping back onto the air mattresses. "But not talking hurts, too."

Like when your family assumes you'll spearhead a stupid student group that you specifically already told them you didn't have time for, or when your parents don't even tell you where they are for the entire day during your short visit home again. And _maybe_ , if you're lucky, they can spare a few minutes for you on _Christmas_.

She didn't push the point any further with Katniss, though, letting the advice hang in the air and hoping Katniss decided to catch it.


	12. Repairs

Gale spent the morning of Christmas Eve putting new tires on his mother's car, with Rory's half-assed assistance. Rory was torn between wanting to learn how to change a tire and bossing around their younger cousins in the all-day gaming tournament he and Vick had arranged. Gale's aunt and uncle and their three kids were visiting for the holiday, which was fun but made the small house feel even smaller. Rory had only partially paid attention to Gale's instructions about the tires, and after they'd gotten the new tires on and used the jack to lower the car, Gale finally released his brother back to the tournament. He could do the final tightening on his own. Besides, it was a good excuse to be alone, outside for a little while. He'd get into the Christmas spirit later, but out in the yard by himself with the cars he could indulge in what he truly wanted to do: brood about Katniss ignoring him.

"The tires look good," a voice said. His mother stepped onto the front porch, tugging one of her multi-colored, hand-knit shawls more tightly around her shoulders and looking approvingly at the tires. "I wish you'd let me pay for them."

"Christmas present," he reminded her as he gave the lug nut one final yank. New tires hadn't been in his spending plan, but he'd changed his mind after seeing how worn the treads on his mother's car were. It made him queasy to think of her driving around on the steep, icy mountain roads on those things.

She stepped down into the yard and joined him in the driveway. "You're spending too much on us," she said quietly.

They'd been over this. Multiple times. The kids all needed things, too—clothes for school, shoes—and he had more money now than ever before. It wasn't that he was eager to spend it, but when they needed basics, how could he not help? But instead of rehashing all those arguments, he simply picked up a rag that had fallen to the ground and tossed it back into the toolbox on the truck's bed.

"Blame Dad. You know how he was about tires."

His mother smiled at the memory. "Well, thank you. From both of us."

She reached over to hug him and Gale felt a prick in his throat at the idea of his father looking down at them from heaven. If only Gale hadn’t been away for so long, he could have replaced the tires sooner.

After a minute, he pulled out of the hug and started circling the car to make one last check of the tires. His mother stayed in the driveway, watching him. He could feel her wanting to speak, working up to it. She'd been like this a few days ago, when she pestered him about spending so much of his vacation indoors reading the online newspapers rather than getting outside like he used to. He'd started looking at Madge's father's campaign website and had been sucked into an endless series of links. Translated, he knew his mother meant: when was he going to start running again? To get her off his case, he'd switched his focus to outdoor household chores, but still hadn't hit the trail.

Pausing at the front right tire, he looked back at her. He might as well get it over with; she never let up when something was on her mind.

"What's up, Ma?"

"I haven't seen Katniss around," she said in a voice straining too hard to be casual.

He grunted in response and turned his attention back to the tires.

"Everything all right?" she asked.

He shrugged. He wasn't about to get into this with his mother of all people.

"You haven't seemed like yourself since you two went to that party. Something happen?"

She was fishing. Gale gazed back at her, trying to gauge if he could wait her out. Not telling her anything meant she’d seek out other sources of information, like Rory, who was in Prim's class at school. The last thing Gale needed was his brother and Katniss's sister getting involved in . . . whatever was or wasn't happening with Katniss.

"I said some things I wish I hadn't," Gale finally said. He hoped the vagueness would be enough to get her off his back.

His mother shook her head in disappointment. "Gale. Your temper…"

"It wasn't that," he snapped, aware of the irony only after speaking. All right, maybe his temper _had_ been somewhat to blame for his poorly timed, poorly thought-out confession. If Katniss hadn't been so eager to think the worst of him, maybe he'd have held his tongue. It wasn't like he actually wanted to start dating her—he wasn't blind, he'd seen how infatuated she was with that blond kid with the weird name—so why had he bothered telling her that he'd wanted to be more than friends? If he'd been thinking clearly, he'd have realized how much it would freak her out and that he was risking their friendship. But he wasn't used to editing himself around her. He'd opened his big mouth, and now his confession was out there, like a bomb that had destroyed everything in its range.

His mother watched him closely, no doubt trying to guess the root of the dispute, which Gale definitely did not feel like explaining to her. He went back to checking on the tires. By the time he rounded the car and returned to where his mother was standing, she'd decided what she wanted to say.

"You should talk to her," Hazelle said. "Clear up any misunderstandings or ruffled feathers."

"I've tried," Gale said, irritably. "She won't return my calls, and she wouldn't even talk to me at the store when I went to see her there."

"Talk to her _when she's ready_ to talk," Hazelle continued, fixing a scolding look at her son for his rude tone. "Hassling her before she's ready is not going to win you any points."

"I'm not _hassling_ her," Gale said. He couldn't just leave things the way they'd been after the party; he needed her to know he wasn't pining for her, that his feelings were a past tense issue. So he'd sent _one_ text, which she ignored. Then when he'd been at the mall anyway doing Christmas shopping, he'd stopped by the store but she'd still seemed skittish, pointing at the long line of pissy customers and saying she couldn't talk.

It felt like a million years ago. He was starting to feel angrier at the way Katniss was shutting him out than he was at himself for being honest with her about his feelings. Former feelings. Feelings he'd been second-guessing ever since walking into Katniss and Madge's dorm room on his drive home from North Dakota.

Which made the whole thing that much worse: if he didn't actually have the feelings for her that he thought he did, why were they in this situation? If she would just talk to him, he could explain that.

"Well," his mother said, "you can't do anything but give her the time she needs. You just need to trust that your friendship is stronger than this bump."

Talk about unsatisfying advice: she was telling him to do what he was already doing. Waiting.

"I don't have a lot of time left," he groused, absently kicking the nearest tire.

His mother put her arm around him and patted his shoulder. "I'm all too aware of that, hon. So why don't you come inside and help Posy and me make the pies for tonight?"

He pulled away and nodded toward the salvaged wood piled up next to the shed. "I'm going to take care of this first." The chopping, that is. He knew once he went inside that he wouldn't be able to resist the infectious, pre-Christmas frenzied enthusiasm of his siblings and cousins. He wasn't quite ready to let go of his dark mood and wanted to direct whatever bad feelings he had toward the wood rather than any innocent relatives. The firewood needed to be split sometime, anyway.

His mother smiled knowingly and left him to his chores.

#

Gale didn't recognize the car slowly driving down his family's street, headlights illuminating the early dusk. He stopped chopping when the vehicle stopped in front of his house, and let his axe rest on his shoulders in a pose that he was very aware could appear threatening. The neighborhood was going downhill and he didn't know all the neighbors anymore. Rory had told him about a big bust a couple of months back just one block over, where the house apparently looked like a science lab.

A few seconds later, a familiar dark-haired head emerged from the vehicle, and as it drove away Gale found himself facing Katniss. She was wearing the same brightly colored winter jacket she'd worn to Madge's party, though now he could see the maroon collar of her work uniform's polo shirt showing at the neck. She must have gotten a ride home from the mall from someone else stuck working on Christmas Eve. Katniss looked tired, and also uncomfortable, which seemed to be her standard reaction to Gale these days. She was holding a large shopping bag, so laden with boxes that Gale worried she might topple over.

"Hey," she said, rooted to the patch of gravel in front of the neighbors' house.

"Hey back." Gale set the axe down next to the shed and walked across the yard, while Katniss hesitantly crossed the street. They met at the edge of the Hawthornes' property in the gravel driveway near Gale's truck. Neither spoke. Gale wasn't sure how to just dive into the heavy issues between them. They had a lot of practice talking about all sorts of things, but their track record on this particular topic was pretty poor.

"Work busy?" Gale asked, mostly for something neutral to say.

"Terrible," Katniss said, clearly relieved to be talking about something other than the weirdness between them. "Last minute shoppers are the worst, and Joe was all stressed out about his in-laws spending the holidays with him and Sherri for the first time." She glanced toward Gale's house, brightly illuminated and with condensation on the windows from all the cooking and warm bodies inside. "Your cousins here already?"

Gale nodded. They visited from upstate every year, which Katniss knew. "Got in last night. It's so crowded it's hard to breathe." All the beds and couches were occupied, and even the floors were covered with scattered kids in sleeping bags. It actually reminded him of the first place he'd crashed in North Dakota.

Katniss kept her eyes on the Hawthornes' home, long enough that he suspected she was avoiding looking at him.

"So," Gale said, drawing her attention back. "Thanks for stopping by."

"I don't have long," Katniss mumbled, looking down at the gravel. "I have to get home and change for church and wrap all this stuff. But... I've been meaning to call you. I just... Joe gave me extra shifts and it's been crazy busy and... I wasn't sure what to say."

"Just listen, then," Gale said calmly. Katniss peered up at him and he could see how much she'd been dreading this conversation, adding extra fuel to his certainty that he shouldn't have said anything to her about his feelings. He needed to tread carefully to avoid freaking her out again. She was still clutching her shopping bag as though she might have to flee.

"Katniss, I should never have said anything to you," he said. "If had the power to go back and erase that conversation, I'd do it in a heartbeat." He scratched his head through his wool hat while he searched for the right words. "Things have been hard, between my knee and moving to North Dakota and coming back home... I got pretty lonely out there," he admitted, finding himself able to put into words the feelings and thoughts he'd only vaguely understood before. "It's all guys, all the time. I get so sick of the macho BS, the posturing... I missed having a girlfriend, I missed you... I got it mixed up in my head that those weren't the same thing."

He thought he saw a hint of hesitant relief on Katniss's face, though her shoulders were still tensely hunched.

"Really?" she asked. He heard a skeptical note in her question.

He nodded, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

"But what I don't understand is... you seemed jealous. About Ashley, and then Madge. It's been confusing."

Katniss sighed and set her shopping bag down. Then she shoved her hands into her own jacket pockets and kicked the gravel, sending a few pebbles flying. He waited for her to find whatever words she could piece together. Finally she swallowed and spoke.

"I _was_ a little jealous," she admitted quietly. "But not of Ashley or Madge." Looking up at him, she said, "It's always been so easy for you. In high school, we both ran and trained and worked all the time, but you still always had a girlfriend. You were never flustered, never awkward. I... It took so much of my energy when I liked someone, energy I didn't have to spare. So I just ran and kept running and figured I'd deal with boys later... And… it’s later. I guess I was wishing I could be more like you. Not date a lot of people, just one is all I want, but... The longer I put it off, the more anxious I got and now, I just really can't..."

She exhaled in frustration. "I make everything awkward!" Then, scowling at him, she added for emphasis, "Like this. _This_ is awkward now."

Gale laughed, mostly out of relief that Katniss didn't have a bigger problem with him. Her anxiety about her dating inexperience he could totally handle.

"You do have a special gift for awkward," he said with a teasing smile.

Katniss kept talking, frowning as she recalled, "Someone asked me out last semester and I didn't even _know_ until Madge told me afterward. I'm _terrible_ with boys."

"What about that blond guy?" Gale asked. "Are you awkward around him?"

Katniss shook her head. "He's a friend. So he's all right."

Gale felt a pang of jealousy. But was it jealousy in the same way he sometimes felt about Madge—jealousy of someone else’s friendship with Katniss, an awareness that she had other friends and other people in her life now? That was a good thing for her. But he still wasn't sure about that blond guy, Peeta. Did Peeta realize that befriending Katniss was probably the best way to win her over? Gale wouldn't put it past him; the guy seemed pretty sharp. On the other hand, if Katniss was referring to Peeta as a "friend" after he gave her a ride home from Madge's party, it meant that Peeta hadn't tried to pull something when Katniss was feeling extra confused and vulnerable. So maybe the guy wasn't a _total_ scumbag.

Katniss pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at it. "Sorry," she said when she realized he was watching her. "Just checking the time. I need to get home. Prim has a solo in the service and we want to get good seats."

"I'll walk you," Gale said, nodding toward the street in the direction that led the few blocks to Katniss's house. As they started walking, he said, "You know, just because I dated a lot in high school doesn't mean that's what was right for you."

Katniss made a grunting sound, as though she was willing to consider that possibility.

"You have to do what feels right for _you_ ," he said. "And maybe you just weren't ready in high school. Like you said, you were focused on other things." And now, possibly because of the appearance of Peeta in her life, she was feeling ready for... more than just school and running.

Gale didn't like thinking of Katniss making out with that blond guy, but clearly _she'd_ been thinking about it—and possibly more—since she seemed to have developed this heightened sensitivity to her own inexperience. He felt suddenly protective of her, in the same way that he didn't want Posy to so much as hold hands with a boy until she turned 25.

They walked quietly past a few houses, and Gale was relieved that Katniss's silence felt more comfortable than, for example, their drive to Madge's party. It gave him hope that they could get back to their old easy friendship, and at some point leave this incident behind. Maybe his mother was right—this could be just a bump.

"So," Katniss asked hesitantly, "How do you _do_ it?"

"What? Sex?" No way was Katniss ready for sex.

"No!" Katniss blushed furiously. "I meant, how do you keep from turning everything awkward?"

"I don't know. How do you run? How do you explain it?"

"I don't," she huffed. "But that doesn't help me with this."

Gale let out a heavy breath, the air clouding before him. Had he really gone in less than a week from thinking he wanted to start something with Katniss himself to giving her advice about how to get together with someone else? But Katniss, well, she _did_ need help.

He tugged his knit cap lower on his head while he thought. "Well, it shouldn't feel like a lot of effort. If it's the right person. That's what's hard to figure out—you're getting to know someone, and if you like what you learn then you learn more. I mean, you're going to be spending a lot of time with them, so you should like hanging out."

That happened to be his own stumbling block and why most of his previous girlfriends hadn't lasted long.

"What if I already know that about someone?" Katniss asked.

Gale stopped walking and watched Katniss as she stopped a few feet later and turned to look back at him.

"This is about that blond guy, isn't it?"

Katniss stared back, not denying it.

"I don't know, Katniss," he said wearily.

"I don't want to lose him as a friend," Katniss said quietly. "I thought I'd lost you and it was horrible."

Gale exhaled loudly again. She'd hit upon exactly why it was so hard for him to give her advice about this guy. It was more than a little awkward for her to be asking him about this when they hadn't gotten out of their own friendship/relationship quagmire.

He shrugged helplessly. "I can't say I have a lot of success with this type of thing."

He raised his eyebrows at her and she smiled sheepishly in return. They both started walking again, not in quite as companionable a silence as before. Gale was thinking about how if Katniss was agonizing this much about Peeta, and Peeta was taking his time to be so careful about not pressuring her into a relationship before it was obvious that she was completely ready, maybe they would actually be good together.

And then where would Gale fit in? He’d already lost his Most Valued Friend status to Madge. Now he and Madge both might get knocked out of their positions if Katniss ended up with a boyfriend with staying power...

But that was life, wasn't it? It's not like Gale was even around, thanks to his exile in North Dakota. Katniss _should_ have other friends. Needed to. She deserved to move on, even if he was stuck.

When they reached Katniss's house, Gale saw Mrs. Everdeen wave from the living room window to him and, for Katniss's benefit, jab her index finger toward her wrist. Mrs. Everdeen was already dressed in her holiday clothes and was clearly anxious to get to the church. Katniss nodded and started up the stairs, but paused half-way and started pawing through her shopping bag.

"Here," she said, shoving a shoebox at Gale.

"You got me a present?" he asked warily, keeping his hands in his pockets. They didn't do gifts. They very explicitly had agreed freshman year to never exchange Christmas presents.

" _No_ ," Katniss said firmly. "This pair didn't sell, even on clearance, and Joe was going to donate them. They're last season's model, your brand and your size. I couldn't pass them up. He said you could have them."

Gale watched her closely to try to figure out if she was lying or not. Joe gave them discounts, and even occasionally let them divert unsold merchandise from the donation box, but he'd never seen his brand in there before.

"I swear, Gale," Katniss said in an exasperated tone, which was wonderful for its familiarity. "Ask Joe yourself." She pushed the box into his chest and released, forcing him to hold the box or let it fall. Then, digging in the shopping bag once more, she pulled out a few wrinkled sheets of paper and shoved them toward him as well.

Frowning, he accepted the pages and scanned them. Several sketched human figures lined each sheet in two neat columns.

"Stretches?" he asked, recognizing the printouts from the homework he used to get from the physical therapist he'd been working with after his knee injury. Before the insurance jerks had said he'd maxed out the number of covered sessions.

"Stretches, and some strengthening exercises," Katniss clarified. "I think you're right that your knee is probably fine, since your job is so physical. But if you want to be _sure_ , it wouldn't hurt to do these. You want to be positive all the little muscles and tendons around your knee are strong enough to keep everything stabilized when you run."

Gale looked down at the exercise sheets again, realizing that Katniss must have printed them out before going to work today. Which meant she'd been thinking about him and planning to give him this stuff—before he'd even had a chance to explain everything to her.

She'd still been concerned about him, and probably still considered him a friend even through the weirdness.

"Thanks," he said, looking up at her and feeling oddly emotional. He didn't usually get sappy over things like this. Maybe all those Hallmark Christmas movies his mom had been watching were getting to him.

"Anytime you want to hit the trail, just shout," she said earnestly. "Or if you want help with any of the exercises—I see the other trainers on the team teaching people these things all the time. I could help you."

If he'd let her, she left unsaid.

Mrs. Everdeen rapped on the window, prompting Katniss to grab her shopping bag and bolt up the rest of the stairs.

"Hey," Gale called as her hand reached for the doorknob. "Merry Christmas."

"You too," Katniss called back with a grin before disappearing inside the house.

Waving through the window to an antsy-looking but smiling Prim, who'd poked her head around the curtain to wave at him, Gale carefully folded the physical therapy printouts and opened the shoe box to slide them in. The tangy rubber scent of new running shoes wafted out, hitting him with a wave of nostalgia for how good it felt to slide on a fresh pair of shoes, their cushioning still so full that he could imagine he was flying as he ran, their surface not yet marred by any specks of mud. He loved the mud—dirty shoes were a badge of honor—but there was something special about that small window of pre-mud beauty.

He smiled as he turned back into the dark street to walk home, aware that Katniss knew all this about him, having heard him wax poetic over many a pair of running shoes over their friendship.

Getting your best friend back was a pretty damn good Christmas present.


	13. Tough Customer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haymitch is up to something.

Haymitch was already sitting in Greasy Sae's—the only diner in what was left of downtown Twelve Springs—when Gale arrived. Gale nodded a greeting to Sae and a few other people he knew as he made his way from the front door to the corner booth where Haymitch was sitting, hunched over a cup of coffee. Haymitch had a newspaper on the table, but his eyes were on the other customers. The guy blended well, Gale thought. Based purely on appearances, Gale never would have guessed Haymitch was a presumably wealthy political consultant who spent half his time in DC. There was no fancy car parked out front, and Haymitch's worn, canvas jacket and scuffed boots matched what most of the other men were wearing. But more importantly, his suspicious, world-weary expression was what helped him fit in.

Haymitch lifted his mug in a toast as Gale slid into the bench across from him. "Thanks for coming," he said as he poured coffee from a pitcher into a mug for Gale. Nudging it forward, he asked, "Have a good Christmas?"

"Yeah, actually," Gale said, warming his hands on the mug and letting the heat soak through to his fingers. Making up with Katniss was a huge relief. And he just wasn't going to think yet about how feeling so at home again was going to make it even harder to return to North Dakota.

"How's Madge?" he asked Haymitch, wondering if she'd squared things away with her parents. Katniss had mentioned that Madge and her parents had gone out of town for Christmas to visit a relative on her dad's side.

"Same," Haymitch answered neutrally, watching Gale for a reaction, which Gale figured meant that Haymitch didn't know for certain how close Gale and Madge were and didn't want to give anything away that he didn't have to, like maybe that Madge had been unhappy before and was still unhappy. Well, Gale didn't feel like giving away anything either, especially not how much he knew about Madge's state of mind after her father's candidacy announcement. He kept his poker face on as he took a sip of coffee. Strong and slightly bitter, the way Sae always made it.

When Haymitch didn't say anything else, Gale set his mug down. "So. What's all this about?"

_This_ meaning this meeting. Haymitch had called Gale the day after Christmas and asked to meet at this diner, saying he was going to be in town meeting with someone else—a key former union rep at the mine who Gale remembered his dad talking about favorably—and wanted to bounce something off Gale. Gale had reluctantly agreed, partly out of boredom—not working left him with more time than he knew what to do with—and partly out of curiosity. Why was Haymitch meeting with the union guy and making sure Gale knew about it? Haymitch had obviously carefully name-dropped Jerry's name as a way to build credibility with Gale, and it had worked.

"You check out the campaign website?" Haymitch asked.

"A little." A lot, actually. He'd read Undersee's biography and scoured the site for pictures of Madge—there was only one, a family shot—and then eventually poked through the position statements and other promotional stuff.

"What'd you think?"

Gale shrugged and took another sip from his mug. There had actually been a few decent ideas, but politicians would say anything, wouldn't they? "It's all just a bunch of words."

"Words _are_ how you tell people what you'll do if elected," Haymitch said.

Gale didn't appreciate his tone and simply stared at him in response. He didn't come here to get snarked at.

Haymitch didn't seem phased. After a pause, he continued. "So. Your father was Hank Hawthorne."

Hearing his father's name unexpectedly always sent a jolt of surprise tinged with pain through Gale. "You knew him?"

"No. But I knew a lot of guys like him." Haymitch watched Gale intently and then elaborated. "Guys who were used up and tossed aside."

Gale gritted his teeth, not sure yet if Haymitch qualified to sound like he could identify with his family's problems. "You from around here?" Gale asked. Haymitch's speech had a familiar cadence, though his words were a little more clipped than Gale was used to hearing.

"Up north a ways, rust belt."

No wonder Haymitch could blend in at Greasy Sae's. But he'd also gone on to success and influence in the political arena, and rather than give Gale hope that he too could look forward to a day when he might have enough money that he wouldn't have to worry about his mother losing the house, he was still suspicious of the other man. This meeting was strange, Haymitch bringing up Gale's father was strange, and Gale just all around didn't trust the guy.

Haymitch kept talking. "I visited with Jerry McMann this morning, and he said your family's tied up in the courts, fighting for your father's benefits."

Well, that explained Haymitch's meeting with the union rep, though it was disconcerting to think that Madge's uncle had done this deep a background check on him. He and Madge weren't even friends. Gale limited his response to a grunt acknowledging that Haymitch had spoken.

Haymitch leaned forward and continued. "The claims process is a mess. The system is rigged against the people it's supposed to help, like your family."

Gale snorted. That much he knew already, that the system was rigged. "Undersee paying you the big bucks to tell him groundbreaking stuff like this?"

Haymitch ignored the dig and kept talking. "It sounds like something that should be good for the miners and their families—benefits for workers injured or disabled in the mines—but fat chance getting anything. The companies get away doing what they're doing to your family: giving you the runaround in court after court." Haymitch lowered his voice. "Bruce is looking for ways to reform the whole process."

Gale had to admit that Haymitch knew how to hook bait. "What's Undersee think he can do?"

"Depends on what he can pull off and if he can get the legislature to cooperate with him. But he'd make it a priority, which I assume you understand is politically... risky. He has to walk the line between support for the workers and not making it so difficult that the companies turn on him and threaten to close shop and take all those jobs with them. He's already lost some endorsements and donors because he wouldn't commit to rolling over whenever they snap their fingers."

Haymitch was acting like Gale should be impressed, but Gale just wanted Haymitch to get to the point already. He sat up and pushed his mug away.

"Why am I here? What do you want from me?"

He thought he spotted a glimmer of admiration in Haymitch's eyes. Haymitch leaned back in the booth and assessed Gale. "It's been a while since I was 19 and pissed off about everything. I want to know more about what's on your mind, pass it along to Bruce as we work on our messaging. Understanding what you and your family have been through would help with that."

"And why would I want to help Undersee?" Gale asked. "He owned the damn mine."

A barely-there smile ghosted across Haymitch's face. "I figured you'd ask that."

#

Madge slammed her laptop closed as she heard her mother's heels approaching the kitchen, and focused all her attention on sipping the dregs of her post-workout mango-strawberry smoothie.

Mrs. Undersee raised her eyebrows at her daughter as she pushed through the swinging door and walked into the room. "Are your grades up yet?"

"No," Madge lied, setting the empty smoothie glass back on the counter. "One of my professors is late turning them in. He's on a cruise. In the Caribbean. The school waits until all the grades are available before posting them. Otherwise the GPA calculation gets messed up."

That sounded plausible, right? Mrs. Undersee looked skeptical, but didn't press the issue, setting her purse on the counter and pulling out her iPad.

"Are the Russells still coming over for dinner tonight?" Madge asked.

Mrs. Undersee nodded, but didn't look up, her attention on the screen.

"Do you want me to be here?"

Mrs. Undersee paused and looked over at Madge. "Only if you want to. I know these dinners aren't your cup of tea."

Absolutely true. But it was also true that these dinners were practically the only time Madge saw her father lately, though she wasn't about to point that out. She didn't need another beleaguered explanation from her mother about how busy her father was these days.

"I could be there," Madge offered. "I don't have anything else going on today, other than practicing this afternoon."

"All right," her mother said with a nod. "Thank you. They're arriving around 6 for cocktails."

Then Mrs. Undersee sat down on one of the barstools and swiped a few screens on her iPad, absorbed once again.

Madge swiveled in her own stool to face her mother. "So... Dad's trying to get Senator Russell's endorsement?"

Mrs. Undersee looked over at Madge and tilted her head ever so slightly. "I thought you didn't want to be involved in any of this."

"That's not what I said," Madge said, straining to not show her irritation. Talking to her parents about her role on the campaign—which, as her mother had predicted, happened during the drive to Aunt Emily's estate outside Pittsburgh, the first time all three Undersees had spent more than a few seconds together since the holiday party—had not gone well. "I just said I wanted you guys to talk to me yourselves before publicly committing me to things."

"Well, we didn't think you were essential at this dinner," Mrs. Undersee said, turning back to the iPad.

"That's not what I was—" Madge cut herself off. This was exactly why the conversation hadn't gone well. Her parents had interpreted her concern as Madge saying she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the campaign, and she could tell it had hurt their feelings. Now they were overly formal about anything campaign-related and went out of their way not talk about it in front of her. But since 99% of what they talked about and thought about was the campaign, that meant Madge was left out in the cold even more than usual. Even their short trip to her Aunt Emily's for Christmas was campaign-heavy, since Emily had a lot of wealthy connections the Undersees could solicit for donations. All the cocktail and dinner conversations had centered on fundraising.

Madge tried again. "I'm interested in what's happening in the campaign. I _should_ know, in case anyone asks."

Her mother set her iPad down and gazed at her daughter. "Well, it's difficult to know which events do and do not fit into the narrow range of activities that you apparently consider acceptable." Before Madge could protest, her mother held up her hand to indicate that she wasn't finished. "Madge, this is just getting started. If you're already feeling burdened, we don't want to wear you out this early. It's a long time until the election in November."

Madge bit her lip, unable to tell if her mother was truly concerned about burning Madge out on campaign stuff or if this was more of her passive-aggressive way of responding to Madge voicing her concerns. Her mother's tone had _sounded_ more sincere...

They were interrupted by the chime of the front doorbell. Mrs. Undersee shot her daughter a quizzical look, but Madge wasn't expecting any guests.

"Late Christmas present delivery?" Madge guessed, hopping off her stool so she could get the door.

To her surprise, she opened the door to discover Gale Hawthorne, waiting on the porch and looking just as uncomfortable as he had when he'd dropped her off at the beginning of the break. He was wearing a gray wool cap, and his hands were shoved into his coat pockets. His breath puffed out in clouds into the cold air.

Madge reached up to touch her hair, instinctively trying to smooth it into presentability. _Why_ had she thought it was a good idea to answer the door right after her workout? She was still wearing a ratty old T-shirt and her yoga pants, and her hair was a disaster, with out of control flyaway pieces near her face.

Why was he here? Did he want to talk to her about Katniss? Had Katniss really not talked to him yet? Madge hadn't had a chance to catch up with her since before Christmas, thanks to the trip to Aunt Emily's.

"Can I come in?" Gale asked. "It's not exactly Palm Springs out here."

"Oh," Madge said apologetically, opening the door all the way and standing back so he could walk in. She noticed his shoes first—they were the nice, polished ones he'd worn to her parents' party, not the dirty work boots she'd seen when he drove her home. Did he feel like he needed to dress up to see her or come to her house? And here she was, extra slovenly for him.

"Is everything... are you okay with Katniss?" Madge asked when he was inside.

He seemed surprised and then nodded abruptly, looking around the entryway. So he didn't want to talk about Katniss? Gale pulled his wool hat off and shoved it in his coat pocket, which left his hair staticky and standing on end. He'd shaved recently, although he'd missed a small patch right behind his jaw, which seemed to pulse with a magnetic pull that made her want to touch his skin, feel the roughness.

Before Madge could ask him why he'd come over, she heard her mother's heels on the hardwood floor, clicking through the dining room on her way to the entryway.

"Madge? Who is it?" Mrs. Undersee called.

Madge felt her shoulders tense. She glanced at Gale, who looked similarly apprehensive. "We could go to my room?" she suggested quietly.

Before he could respond, Madge's mother entered the entryway. "Oh," she said on seeing Gale. Her previously hopeful, welcoming tone flattened instantly. "Katniss's friend. Gale, wasn't it? Good to see you again."

Mrs. Undersee smiled thinly at Gale and watched Madge out of the corner of her eye, trying to read her daughter's reaction. Madge couldn't hide that she was surprised and hadn't been expecting Gale; her mother knew she didn't have any other plans for the day.

Madge turned her attention back to Gale. The sooner she could get him away from her mother, the better. "Is everything all right?" she repeated. Because it didn't seem all right to her; Gale Hawthorne wouldn't just show up unannounced at her house unless there was a reason.

Gale lifted his chin, his eyes landing on the top of the stairwell. "I'm actually here to see him," he said, nodding toward the second story landing.

Madge looked up and saw Haymitch leaning over the rail in a casual stance, his hands clasped in front of him. He wore an amused expression that indicated he'd been watching the scene below for some time, probably since hearing the doorbell. Haymitch held one hand up in a greeting and then straightened to walk down the stairs.

"Wanted to chat with Gale here about some campaign business," Haymitch said as he descended.

" _What?_ " Madge felt the question burst out of her mouth before she could recast it more politely. But really— _what_? She turned toward Gale. Had she heard wrong?

Gale was watching her closely, but other than wanting to see how she'd react, Madge couldn't guess what he was thinking. A heavy feeling settled in her stomach, fingers of dread slowly reaching upward.

"We had a good chat the other day," Haymitch said, reaching the bottom of the stairs and joining the others. "I'd like for him to meet Bruce. Should be back around 2, right, Shel?" He directed his question at Mrs. Undersee, who nodded. Madge could tell that her mother was just as confused as she was about what was going on—but if there was one thing Mrs. Undersee knew, it was her husband's schedule.

"Good," Haymitch continued. "Gives us some time first. We'll be in the study." He gestured to Gale which direction to start walking.

"You don't even support my father," Madge blurted to Gale. She was completely lost.

"I don't know if I do or I don't," Gale said. "I've been reading up on him, and Haymitch here said he had some more information he wanted me to see, so here I am."

"Trying to win him over," Haymitch said with a wink. "He's a tough customer."

This was a ridiculous amount of effort for one vote, Madge thought. She looked at her mother to see if she was in on this, but Mrs. Undersee was frowning in Haymitch's general direction, which was actually her usual expression where he was concerned. They didn't have an easy history. Madge knew that her mother had given Maysilee a hard time when she'd first brought Haymitch home, though Maysilee eventually brokered a truce.

After a moment, Mrs. Undersee wiped the frown away and asked politely, "Can I get you some refreshments? Haymitch, your usual, I assume. Gale?"

Gale looked like he regretted having agreed to visit, but he just shook his head. "I'm good, thanks."

Putting his arm around Gale's shoulder, Haymitch started steering the younger man down the hallway that led to the study. Then he paused and looked over his shoulder.

"You're welcome to join us, Madge."

Madge felt the dread tentacles in her stomach burst upward to the back of her throat, threatening to choke her. Had Haymitch really invited Gale over as a way to get Madge interested in the campaign? If she joined them, wouldn't she just be confirming to Haymitch that he was right, that involving Gale was a way to pull Madge in? She couldn't fathom letting anyone, especially Uncle Haymitch, manipulate her like that.

On the other hand, she really _was_ curious. Intensely so. She was dying to know what they could possibly be talking about. She'd love to see Gale give Haymitch some attitude, and to know how Haymitch could have possibly lured Gale back to the Undersees' house.

Mrs. Undersee rescued Madge from having to respond. "Madge, could I get your help in the kitchen with the drinks?"

With one last quick glance at Gale, who was watching her with a frown, Madge turned and followed her mother to the kitchen, grateful for the out and still reeling from the shock of seeing Gale in her house again. Because of _Haymitch_.

Safely behind the kitchen's swinging door, Madge warily asked her mother, "You didn't know about this either?"

"No." Mrs. Undersee pulled two glass tumblers from the cabinet. "I do know Haymitch is concerned about your father's appeal in the mining communities. Your friend is from a mining family..." She held the glasses under the icemaker, the whirring machinery spitting out ice cubes. "Haymitch isn't big on polls. He's more of a gut person. He likes to find influential people in target demographics, figure out what's important to them, get them to help with word of mouth."

"Gale's influential? He's only 19."

"His family has deep roots in Twelve Springs. And wasn't he the captain of his cross-country and track teams in high school? He may have more sway than you realize. At a minimum he could function as a sounding board."

Madge was too shocked at first to speak, but recovered quickly and asked, "How do you know all this about him?"

Mrs. Undersee leveled her gaze at her daughter. "We looked into him, Madge. Security for the holiday party. And I talked to Ivy Everdeen after he dropped you off. I wasn't thrilled about the idea of you dating a surly dropout or drug addict, or worse."

"He's not a dropout or drug addict!" Madge sputtered.

"Twelve Springs is dying," Mrs. Undersee said sharply. "The town is overrun with dope fiends intent on destroying it even sooner than it would die on its own."

"And he's trying to find a way out—"

"Yes, yes, I know. Ivy told me."

"And he's not my... We're not dating. He's Katniss's friend."

"Ivy told me that, too." Mrs. Undersee was focused on pouring whisky into one of the tumblers. She added some Coke to the other glass. Then she nudged the two glasses toward Madge. "If you want to join them, by all means do so. But I want you to go in with your eyes open. You know how good Haymitch is at this—getting people to think they want something."

"I _know_ ," Madge said defiantly. She didn't like being told things that were obvious. She squinted at her mother. "Why are you telling me this?" If her mother thought Madge wasn't interested in the campaign but that she was interested in Gale, then wouldn't she support Haymitch's strategy? Did she actually not want Madge around Gale _more_ than she wanted Madge to be involved in the campaign? Should Madge take that as... legitimate parental concern? Or just more snobbery?

Did other people have this many doubts about why their parents did certain things? Madge seriously doubted it.

"I meant what I said earlier about not wanting to burn you out," Mrs. Undersee said.

"It's not that you don't want me spending time with Gale?" Madge pushed.

Mrs. Undersee swept nonexistent crumbs off the counter. "Ivy was very complimentary of him, which means something, but... I have concerns."

"Like that he's not rich?" Madge asked sharply. "Not going to open the doors to more donors?"

Mrs. Undersee raised her eyebrows at Madge's attempt to needle her, which frustrated Madge even more. "No. I don't know him. We exist in the public eye, now more than ever, and have more at stake than ever before. We need to be cautious about who we associate with. _You_ need to be cautious. About what you tell other people, what their motivations truly are, whether they can be trusted, all of it."

Madge grabbed the glasses and glared at her mother. She'd heard enough. "Gale is a _good_ person."

"All I'm asking is that you keep your eyes open," Mrs. Undersee said.


	14. Meeting

Gale felt like he was going cross-eyed, looking at all the charts and diagrams that Haymitch had strewn over Madge's father's desk. He traced his fingers along a set of linked bubbles that Haymitch had scrawled on a yellow legal pad.

"So after the mine closed, this other company bought it, and then they got bought up by these guys, whose board is controlled by this group?"

"Right," Haymitch said. "Snow Peak Capital. They're the ones giving your family a hard time over your old man's claim. Nothing personal. To them, at least. They're just cutting costs, taking a hard line on all the whining, cheating miners trying to wring cash out of them for fake diseases."

Gale glared at Haymitch.

"You think they don't think that way about us?" Haymitch demanded.

"Us?" Gale's tone was cold. "You telling me they lump political consultants in with dead miners these days?"

Haymitch paused for a moment, looking like he was about to say something. What, Gale wondered. Was he going to apologize for getting rich? Make some kind of ridiculous claim that he was just the same as Gale, deep down? Gale watched him, daring the other man to say something even remotely defensive. But Haymitch just clenched his jaw and, after a pause, turned his eyes back to the diagrams.

"Point is, Bruce was out of the picture long before Snow started fighting miners on their claims."

"Yeah, I got that," Gale said impatiently. He also got that Mr. Undersee wanted to fix the claims process so the miners wouldn't lose so often. Obviously Gale was on board with that, though that was something for the future and there were no guarantees. As for the past, Haymitch had been trying to convince Gale that Mr. Undersee had actually been good for the mine, but Gale was having a hard time buying it. By Haymitch's account, Mr. Undersee had inherited a small stake in the mine when his father passed away, just one of a "portfolio of investments" as Haymitch put it (quickly; he was obviously eager to avoid dwelling on Madge's family being so wealthy that the mine was just one of their holdings). At the time, Madge's parents had been living in Philadelphia, but when Madge was small they decided to move to Appalachia so they could be closer to Mrs. Undersee's parents and try out small town life. Mrs. Undersee helped her parents—old and in failing health—wind down their ice cream and confectionary chain, while Mr. Undersee split his time working remotely at his previous job and "managing his investments" (Haymitch's words again), which initially involved frequent trips back to Philadelphia. Eventually Mr. Undersee tried to get more involved in the mine in Twelve Springs, though it sounded like his efforts hadn't been particularly appreciated, which didn't surprise Gale in the least. He couldn't think of a single person he knew who'd give two shits about some rich big city guy who didn't know anything about mining swooping in and dictating what they should or shouldn't be doing.

"He pushed for more safety procedures," Haymitch had said. "Dust monitors, alarms, spot inspections, all the stuff you're supposed to have but no one actually does. He got it all, but only through some delicate maneuvering between the union and the other owners, and only for a short time—the seam tapped out and the majority owners sold to a larger shop to keep the doors open. I think you know what happened then," Haymitch finished grimly, which was true. Gale did know. Production had already been declining but after the sale the company really started cutting corners, which included letting safety slide. Gale remembered listening in on his father's angry conversations with friends over beers on the front porch, a steady stream of griping about the new owners. According to Haymitch, Mr. Undersee didn't have many options as a minority owner and eventually sold off his shares to avoid a conflict of interest so he could run for office and try to fix things from the other side. He was well-liked in the town and the previous State Rep was retiring, so he coasted into office. Then he'd apparently been good in the State legislature, a behind the scenes dealmaker who knew everybody and got things done. He'd been a logical choice as a ticket mate for the current governor, a popular former military general, and tallied up another easy victory.

It wasn't that Gale didn't believe Haymitch—he did, and everything Haymitch mentioned Gale could remember from his own, more limited understanding of events when he'd been younger—but the whole situation was screwed up. Madge's father went through some hand-wringing about the mine but still came out ahead; Gale's father lost his life.

Sounded about right.

Haymitch was talking about how the current campaign was going to be more difficult than Mr. Undersee's previous ones when they were interrupted by the sound of the study's door opening.

Madge walked in, carrying two glasses of liquid in two different shades of brown. She passed the lighter colored one—whisky, maybe bourbon—to Haymitch, and the darker one to Gale. She'd put on a hooded sweatshirt with the university's logo, but was still wearing those swishy pants that made her ass look, well, perfect. When she handed his glass to him, Gale made sure to drag his eyes up to her face, but what he saw confirmed what he'd suspected when he'd seen her earlier. She was hurt, probably felt ambushed. Her expression was guarded, with a suspicious glare directed at him. It was how she always used to look at him, before this trip home, before he'd gotten to know her better.

Not that he blamed her; if he were her, he'd be wondering why he was here. He could see how she'd interpret his sudden appearance for a meeting with Haymitch as allying himself with the campaign rather than her, though that was also frustrating because he wasn't actually on the campaign's side. He was just listening to what Haymitch had to say. He tried to catch her eye, but she was steadfastly avoiding looking at him, her jaw set at a _don't even_ try _to talk to me_ angle.

Haymitch drained his glass with a satisfied smacking sound and then grinned in Madge's direction. "My compliments to the bartender. Glad you could join us, Madge." He gestured to the charts on the desk. "I was just showing Gale here who controls the company that bought the mine in Twelve Springs."

Gale took a sip from his own glass and was disappointed to taste only carbonation and sugar. Coke. No compliments to the bartender from him.

Madge didn't say anything, though she did walk over to the desk to examine the charts, catching up on what Haymitch had already covered. Then she shifted through some of the other papers on the desk and accepted the manila folder Haymitch nudged toward her before he walked to the mini-bar near the window.

Gale watched Madge, feeling lost. He was missing something. Madge still hadn't spoken, and Haymitch didn't seem to expect her to. Her uncle seemed to know that she'd react this way—immediately diving into the papers—and was focused instead on refilling his glass. Once he did, he just leaned against the window ledge, swirling his glass and waiting.

For what? Gale wished he knew what was going on in Madge's head. It was why he liked when she got angry—he didn't have to guess at what she was thinking. As far as he could tell, Haymitch expected Madge to figure something out from those papers. Why couldn't he just tell her? And why wouldn't she just openly get mad at him for not telling her that Gale was coming over?

The games Madge's family seemed to always be playing were exhausting.

"You want to tell me what's going on here?" Gale finally asked, looking back and forth between Madge and Haymitch.

Haymitch just smiled and took another drink from his glass, but Madge paused to glance at Gale. "I want to know why you're here," she said.

"He's trying to convince me to vote for your dad," Gale said, annoyed that she thought she could get the answer to that question from the damn papers rather than him. Was her entire family incapable of saying what they meant? "He said once I understood the players, I'd be on board supporting your dad."

Without giving any sort of reaction, Madge returned to pawing through the papers. Gale felt like she was punishing him for not being on her side, and wanted to explain that he wasn't _not_ on her side. Before he could say anything, Madge pulled a paper out and read from it.

"William Cato?" She looked at Haymitch with a frown. "There hasn't been anything in the news about a challenger."

Gale moved over to the desk and stood behind Madge, reading over her shoulder. She was holding a form titled Campaign Contribution Disclosures, filled in for someone named William Cato. Gale had no idea who that was, and was distracted from wondering by the fact that he was standing close enough to Madge to notice that some of the fine blond hairs from her messy ponytail leapt toward his own jacket, drawn by static.

"Cato isn't official yet," Haymitch said, pushing off from the wall and walking back over to the desk. "But we have a feeling he will be."

"Who is he?" Gale asked. He could slip his arm around Madge's waist from where he was standing, and wanted to smack himself for being so aware of that. What was his problem? She didn't even want to talk to him; he shouldn't be thinking about how perfectly she'd fit against his body. He took a half-step backward so he could put a few more inches between himself and Madge.

"Some guy from Dryer's Creek," Haymitch said. "Decent profile. He's in equipment sales, though obviously business has been down lately. Born here," he said, pointing his cup toward Madge for emphasis. "No background in politics and probably no policy ideas of his own, but I'm sure that's the point. He's groomable." Haymitch set his glass on the table and leaned forward on his hands toward Gale and Madge. "Mays and I saw him meeting with Crane last week, and we hear he's put out feelers for senior staff with campaign experience. He's prepping. Check out his fundraising total."

Gale watched Madge pull the disclosures page closer and then look back up at Haymitch. "How much does my dad have?"

"Nowhere near that much. We were on track for a respectable showing, assuming we got the party's support but... All bets are off now, if the party chair is meeting with Cato. Crane wants a candidate with a big war chest, and this guy has it."

"But he's not a candidate yet?" Madge asked.

Haymitch shook his head. "Exploratory phase. But Crane's been ducking our calls, so I'd guess it's nearly a sure-thing." To Gale he pointed out a line on the campaign donations disclosure form. "Recognize that name?"

_Snow Peak Capital._ Just seeing the name made Gale's stomach clench.

"Snow's backing that Cato guy?" Gale said. At Haymitch's confirming nod, Gale asked, "And that's why you think I'll support Undersee instead?"

"Yes and no. Yes, they're backing Bill Cato, but that's not a surprise. The part that has me worried is this." Haymitch pointed on the disclosure form again, at the name associated with the one donation that dwarfed all the others.

"What is 'The Jobs and Freedom Group'?" Madge asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Haymitch said darkly. "So would I. Mays is looking into it. All we know so far is its PO Box number and that it just formed recently, which tells me it's a funnel for out of state money. No one here has cash like that."

Gale still wasn't entirely following all the implications of what Haymitch was saying, but he did understand the frown on Madge's face as she stared at the paper. This was bad.

"Can't we tell people about this?" she finally asked, looking back up at Haymitch.

"Tell people what? That some group that apparently supports _jobs_ and _freedom_ donated money to another candidate? That a company made donations to a candidate they like? There's nothing illegal about any of this. And even if anyone cared, how are we going to get the story out if we're facing a never-ending fire hydrant gushing with cash buying up all the ad time?"

Haymitch kept ranting about all the things the campaign needed money for, most of which came down to advertising and staff to reach voters. He seemed to be talking to Gale more than Madge, which Gale assumed was because Madge already understood his explanations about how campaigns were arms races with money as the weapon, and how the amounts needed dwarfed what Madge's father could contribute from their family's own resources.

Gale sat back in his chair, growing progressively more disgusted. Pulling the campaign finance disclosures page closer, he felt the knot in his stomach pull tighter as he studied the numbers. When Haymitch paused to let some dramatic point sink in, Gale held the campaign finance disclosures page up and broke in.

"So the assholes at Snow gave a bunch of money to some guy who's not even a real candidate yet, and they won't pay my family _what they owe us_?"

Haymitch gazed at him. "We have more former miners than actual miners in this state. Think about how sick some of them are. To Snow, it probably sounds like a pretty smart investment buy a candidate who'll help keep them from bleeding any more cash."

Gale threw the disclosures page back onto the desk and started pacing. The more he learned, the more he felt like punching someone. And here was Haymitch, trying to sell Madge's father as the underdog candidate, the one who, despite being a fat cat himself, was actually going to be better for Gale's family if elected. Gale barely knew Haymitch and couldn't say for sure that he trusted the guy—his little maneuver surprising Madge with Gale's sudden appearance wasn't winning him any favors—but Gale did have faith in Madge, and he could see that she looked just as disgusted as Gale to be hearing all of this. He tried to catch her eye, but she was staring at a distant point out the window and looked like she was deep in thought. Angry thoughts most likely, judging by the thrust of her chin and the line between her eyes.

Before Haymitch could move on to his next tirade, the door to the study opened and Mr. Undersee walked in.

Gale automatically stood a little straighter, and then felt annoyed at his reaction. Mr. Undersee was just a person, not the king of the world. There was something unnerving, though, about seeing the man in person after Gale had spent the last week or so absorbing pictures, articles, and quotes about him in newspaper articles. He looked nearly the same as he did in all the official articles—wearing a suit and an open, friendly expression.

Mr. Undersee's eyes lit up when they landed on Gale, and he immediately targeted him for a vigorous handshake.

"Gale Hawthorne, great to meet you, can't thank you enough for stopping by and squeezing us into your schedule," Mr. Undersee said, pumping Gale's hand and smiling broadly.

"Nice to meet you, sir," Gale said politely, returning the handshake.

"Please, call me Bruce." Mr. Undersee smiled again and then moved over to pull Madge into a quick hug. "You're joining us, Pumpkin?" he asked with raised eyebrows.

Madge shrugged and didn't alter her stony expression. Her father made a complimentary comment about being grateful to have her input and then gestured for everyone to sit on the overstuffed couches.

"So, Gale," Mr. Undersee said as he sat down. "I understand you're just in town for the holidays, visiting from the oil boom in the Dakotas."

"That's right, sir." Gale took a seat on the couch opposite Mr. Undersee. By himself, he noticed. Madge perched on the arm of Gale's couch like she wasn't fully committed to participating in the conversation, while Haymitch migrated back over to the bar to refill his glass. Again.

"I wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about your father," Mr. Undersee said to Gale, scooting forward and clasping his hands together. "He was a fine man. I only met him a few times, back when we were both working to improve the Twelve Springs mine, but I remember he had an incredible amount of integrity and commanded the utmost respect from the union members and the community." Mr. Undersee smiled ruefully. "A few of us actually tried to get him to run for office when the State Rep seat became available, but he made it clear that he had no patience for politics."

Gale blinked in surprise. He'd never heard that, though he supposed it was possible. People _had_ admired his father, who couldn't go anywhere in the tri-county area without running into someone he knew. The church couldn't even hold everyone who came to his funeral. Gale had no doubt his father would have shrugged off any suggestion of running for office, but he'd have to ask his mom if they'd ever talked about it.

He glanced at Madge out of the corner of his eye. How weird would it be if his father was the politician, instead of hers? He couldn't see it. Politicians were always rich. And Gale's father would never have been able to put up with all the schmoozing and parties and fundraising crap. Hunting, his family, and barbeques were how he'd always wanted to spend his time. He only became the union rep because he'd been so disgusted at the previous rep's double-dealing.

Mr. Undersee continued talking. "I've heard a lot about you and wanted to meet you myself, though I understand from Haymitch that you have a healthy degree of skepticism about politicians. I can imagine you must be a tad bewildered."

Mr. Undersee, though still smiling affably, seemed to be waiting for a response from Gale.

"Sounds about right," Gale said.

Mr. Undersee chuckled, a pleasant rumbling sound. "If it helps, and I don't suppose it does from your perspective, I don't think of myself as a politician. I care about helping the people and businesses of this state, and frankly, the best way to ensure that happens is through elected positions. Campaigns are a necessary evil to being elected, unfortunately. But I'd like to do my damnedest to take the nonsense out of this process, which is why Haymitch thought I should meet you. He said you had a finely tuned... what were his exact words, again? Ah, yes. Bullshit detector."

Gale noticed Haymitch smile into his glass before taking another sip.

"This is where I'm looking for some help from you," Mr. Undersee said. "I wish more of the young people of our state didn't need to move away to earn a living. We need jobs here."

Obviously. All politicians always said they wanted to create more jobs.

"The problem," Mr. Undersee continued, "is that we can't rely on coal anymore for jobs, but admitting that is political suicide. Nobody wants to give up on the idea of life the way it's been for generations. People are proud, rightly, of their heritage and wary of anything that sounds like an attack on it. Even hinting at the need for diversification gets you tarred and feathered as a coal-hater. But coal is on its way out and we need to draw other industries here, develop other markets. Has Madge told you about her mother's efforts to develop an artist's college? She's been organizing glassblowing courses. We have a lot of lovely pieces in the house, all of it crafted by local artisans, all supporting them and their families."

Did Madge's father think Gale and Madge were best friends or something? Why would he know any of that? Gale chanced a look at Madge, who was frowning at her father but appeared to be listening intently. Her father kept talking about other ideas, like taking advantage of the state's beauty in ways that didn't carve up or tear apart the mountains, maybe developing more of a tourism industry or supporting films. He also wanted to draw more manufacturing to the area and take advantage of the state's location in between so many other major population centers. The ideas did sound worthwhile and Mr. Undersee was so enthusiastic that Gale could feel himself getting sucked into the image he was painting of the future. Hell yes he'd rather be in the mountains he'd always known and loved than the barren prairie of North Dakota, constantly bracing against the icy wind and living with other transient strangers.

Haymitch finally stepped forward and sat down on the couch next to Mr. Undersee, facing Gale. "We need help with messaging," he said. "That's what this is all leading to. You're our target demographic. You're a smart guy, you get that all this," he gestured to the charts, and the papers on Mr. Undersee's desk, "isn't simple. We're looking for help getting some of this across to people like you. And," he added with a look in Madge's direction, "you, too."

With a concerned smile he shone on both Gale and Madge, Mr. Undersee added, "You're the ones we're at risk of losing, moving to other states. It's why we felt so strongly about you staying in-state for college, Pumpkin." Her father shot a weary smile at Madge, who Gale could tell was still wearing her protective mask. She met her father's eyes but didn't alter her expression.

"So, what do you think?" Mr. Undersee asked, looking back to Gale. "Can you help us out? Let Haymitch here pick your brain, bounce ideas off of you?"

Gale looked back and forth between the two men on the couch, who were watching him intently for his reaction. He still wasn't sure what he thought about everything Haymitch and Madge's father had thrown at him. He had a ton of questions. What did it mean for them to "pick his brain" and "bounce ideas" off of him? What did they expect in return?

But before he got into any of that, he needed to straighten out a more important issue.

Swiveling, he looked right into her suspicious eyes and said, "I'm not agreeing to anything until I talk to Madge."


	15. The Line

During the meeting, Madge had been pretty sure that her father and Haymitch had forgotten she was the reason they even knew about Gale Hawthorne, God's Gift to the Campaign—or potential gift, since they both seemed to gloss over the technicality of winning his support. She could tell they both respected his reticence; it was part of why convincing him would make the victory that much sweeter. She could also tell that their sales job was starting to work on him, slowly, and she didn't have a problem with that. What she had a problem with was her father and uncle steamrolling, or attempting to steamroll, what up until this afternoon had been a little slice of her life that was campaign-free. Gale Hawthorne had been a comfort to her on the night of the candidacy announcement, and now in the same way that college was being taken away from her as a campaign-less zone, so was Gale.

She'd worried her heart had stopped when Gale cut them off and refused to agree to help until he'd talked to her. Her father and Haymitch had been equally surprised, though they both recovered and hid it well. Haymitch had simply nodded and toasted Gale as he exited the study. Madge's father had gone back on a charm offensive, thanking Gale for taking the time to visit with them, and of course hugging Madge before disappearing for whatever was next on his always-packed schedule.

Madge stood up from the couch and flinched when her father closed the study door behind him, giving her and Gale privacy. She didn’t take it as them being considerate; it felt more like she was their offering to Gale, like some kind of trade. _Here, if you help us out, you can have Madge._ Not that she believed she was anyone's possession to be given away, but it was one more reminder that they weren't seeing her as an individual as much as a tool to be deployed for the campaign's benefit.

Gale stood up as Madge did, watching her in that attentive way he had that alternately left her feeling nervous and flattered. She actually felt visible for the first time in days.

"Listen," he said, his voice noticeably softer than it had been when he spoke to her uncle or father. "I figured your uncle would have told you I was coming over. I didn't think he'd try to pull something over on you."

Madge swallowed and wished, not for the first time, that she didn't have to deal with situations like this. "It's not your fault my family is... the way they are."

"Not very straightforward?"

She smiled grimly. "That's the diplomatic way to say it." Then, looking at the historic and ornate furnishings in her father's study she said, "I don't want to talk in here. It's too..."

"Much?" Gale supplied, a similar distasteful expression on his face as he surveyed the room. Turning to Madge, he smiled slyly. "Wanna get outta here? Grab some milkshakes or something in town?"

Madge felt herself smiling for the first time in... she couldn't even remember.

#

Climbing into the cab of Gale's truck minutes later felt like a refuge. It was familiar now, and she didn't even mind the broken heater. She'd just worn an extra warm coat and her fluffiest cashmere hat and gloves in anticipation.

After the engine growled to life, Gale pulled onto the long drive that led to the Undersees' front gate. He had a very distinguished profile, Madge thought. His nose struck her as noble and refined, and the angle of his chin made him look determined. She noticed adorable little tufts of unruly dark hair peeking out from under his hat. There was something else about him, too. She could see why Haymitch and her father were so taken with him. Beyond his demographic appeal and his family's sympathetic story, he had a commanding presence and a trustworthiness that seemed related to his lack of tolerance for anything he saw as fake or wrong. He was the kind of person you wanted on your side.

"So," he said, eyes on the driveway so he could steer around the piles of snow, "what was going on in there? I think I know, but I want to be sure I'm not missing anything."

Madge sat back against the seat. Right. They needed to talk about this mess. She started with the easy part. "Haymitch and my dad really do want your perspective, like they said. You're exactly who they want to appeal to. You're who Haymitch likes to think he used to be and is uncomfortable acknowledging that he's not anymore. I'd guess he thinks he can tap into his former self by talking with you. And my father, well, I think it's good for politicians to try to understand what the people they're going to be representing actually want. If you can help him get in touch with that and he can do what people want when he wins, it's better for everyone isn't it?"

Gale looked up from the driveway at her. "What exactly do they want from me?"

"Well," Madge hedged, "it sounds like they just want to talk to you. They probably wouldn't say it this way, but they may feel out of touch with younger voters... And you have a different perspective than they could get from me." Or from someone like Kevin, who was cut from the same (expensive) cloth as Madge's father himself.

"Just talk?" Gale asked skeptically.

"For now... I could see them trying to get you involved in voter outreach at some point. That means going out and talking people into voting for my father."

Gale gave a _fat chance_ snort, shaking his head as though the very idea was preposterous. They passed through the Undersees' gate and waved at the guards and then Gale stopped to wait for a line of cars to pass on the main road.

"Voter outreach... Is that a job?" he asked while he waited for an opening in traffic.

Did she detect a hint of interest in his voice at the prospect of a job? Madge didn't know him well enough to tell.

"Depends," she said. "Voter outreach is usually done by volunteers, managed by someone with campaign experience." Someone like Kevin, who did actually already have that job on her father's campaign. Not that Madge would be sad to see Kevin go.

Gale turned onto the main road, accelerating up to speed. He focused on driving for a few seconds, but Madge could see from his frown that he was still mulling over something. When they reached a stoplight, he looked at her and asked, "What about you? Are you cool with all this?"

Madge looked down at her lap and picked at a loose thread on her coat's sleeve. "Not really," she finally said. She didn't even need to look at Gale to know that he was waiting for her to explain.

She really didn't want to have to talk about this. Why did Aunt Maysilee have to get married anyway? Madge could seriously use less Haymitch in her life these days. But this problem wouldn't go away on its own. Before she could delay any further, Madge opted for the band-aid approach—getting it over with quickly—and blurted, "Don't you think it's a little strange that my uncle targeted _you_? He knows practically everyone in the state. You're not the only miner's son he could find."

"I do think it's strange," Gale said simply. "That's why I wanted to talk to you." He glanced over at her. "What do they think is going on with us? Your mom doesn't like me, your dad and uncle are trying to get me into the campaign... Did you talk to them about that student group you were so pissed off about?"

For as much as Madge appreciated Gale's directness, a refreshing change from her family, this was excruciatingly uncomfortable to talk about. She quickly explained how talking to her parents about the student group hadn't gone very well and then reluctantly said, "I don't know exactly what they all think about you and me. My mom and aunt are friends with Katniss's mom and they all gossip, though I'm never sure what they're saying or if it's true or not—half the time they're just guessing because it's not like Katniss and I tell them everything."

"My mom also talks to Katniss's mom," Gale cut in. "I get it."

Madge smiled, wondering momentarily what Gale's mom looked like. She couldn't picture a more feminine version of him. It was also kind of adorable to think about Gale having to deal with parental gossip, just like Katniss and Madge did. Then she realized that she'd been looking at him for too long and that once again he was waiting for her to keep talking.

"And my dad," Madge continued, "well, he always knows what's going on because my mom or aunt and uncle tell him." It seemed unfair, and always caught Madge off guard that her father knew about her life without actually talking to her. The meeting with Gale and Haymitch this afternoon was the most time Madge had spent with her father since the drive home from Aunt Emily's, though she didn't volunteer that particular fact to Gale.

"So," she said, "they _should_ know that we're not a couple or anything... My best guess is that my uncle and father think we're friends and hope I'll be able to convince you to help them out." That was actually the most charitable spin Madge could put on the situation. She thought it was more likely that Haymitch knew perfectly well that Madge and Gale were only acquaintances, but assumed Madge had a crush that he could capitalize on. Madge knew she didn't have a crush on Gale— _maybe_ , at _most_ , she had a clinical, utterly objective awareness of how hot he was, combined with a totally reasonable appreciation for how kind he'd been to her on the night of the candidacy announcement, resulting in maybe a little more fondness in their acquaintanceship—but it wasn't a _crush_ crush. They weren't even real friends.

Madge hurried to continue. "It's probably more convincing if I tell you why my dad would be a good governor than if they do, right? That's what I'd bet they were thinking."

Gale raised his eyebrows skeptically. "How convincing can you be when I don't like how they're using you, playing these games? I mean, what was that, with your uncle not telling you I was coming over? He knew you'd want to come into our meeting."

"My father wasn't playing," Madge pointed out. "Probably," she qualified. How pitiful was it that she didn't know for sure? On the other hand, her parents were usually a united front and her mother did warn her to keep her eyes open, so maybe Haymitch had been operating independently. He had a tendency to do that. "But the thing about my uncle is, it's so obvious—he knows I'd be onto him about this and that you probably would, too. So it's not like he was actually getting away with anything sneaky. Other than not telling me you were coming over." _That_ she was pissed off about.

Gale shook his head in annoyance as he turned into a parking lot for a restaurant and coated into a free space near the front door. He pushed the emergency brake pedal, more forcefully than was probably necessary, and then turned to face Madge.

"I don't like it."

"I don't either," Madge said, unnecessarily, she thought. She gazed back at Gale, feeling like they were having a stand-off about something, but she wasn't sure what. They agreed on this. And she was the one who had to live with the campaign and these schemes, not him. He could drive away, like they'd just done to get to this restaurant. In fact, maybe he wanted to drive away right now, from her and her mess of a family. He hadn't even unbuckled his seatbelt yet, so maybe he was considering it. She wouldn't blame him, but looking at him now, the idea of not seeing him again... felt like a loss. Couldn't they just visit for a little while? Enjoy those milkshakes?

"Are you still up for milkshakes?" she asked hesitantly.

She was relieved to see the more serious, disapproving look melt away from Gale's face, replaced by a smile that made her feel the tiniest bit lighter.

"Absolutely."

#

They ended up ordering hot chocolates instead of milkshakes, and a large order of fries to share. By mutual unspoken agreement, they didn't talk about the campaign or Madge's family's strange dynamics while they ordered or waited for their food. Instead, Gale told Madge about reconciling with Katniss, and how she was helping him get ready to run again with targeted exercises.

"That's great," Madge beamed. "So everything's all right with you two?"

"Not exactly, but better. I think she—" Gale stopped talking and frowned. "This is weird. I was about to say something about her that I'm not sure I should be talking about with you, but you probably already know about it so—"

"Something about Peeta?" Madge asked.

"Yeah," Gale said, deflating ever so slightly.

"Hmmmm," Madge said. Then, "I think we just wait. On that. Peeta and his family go to Mexico for the holidays so..." There likely wouldn't be any developments between Katniss and Peeta until he returned. They could both avoid saying whatever they independently knew or thought about the Katniss and Peeta situation. "We just wait," Madge said decisively.

"Fair enough," Gale agreed.

Madge asked him about the rest of his Christmas, and while they made their way through the fries he entertained her with stories about his siblings and cousins. He was a different person when he was talking about his family, Madge thought. He was the person she'd seen smiling in that Christmas card on Katniss's refrigerator, the fun older brother who took his siblings to cut down a Christmas tree and drove them to the mall and cooked dinner when their mother worked late.

He asked her about her Christmas, too, and she related in more detail how "family time" at Aunt Emily's house had been anything but, thanks to Aunt Emily sharing her parents' focus on the campaign. Madge had stayed in her room most of the time, reading and listening to music and missing Maysilee and Haymitch, who were at least fun, unlike Aunt Emily. She could see Gale frown as she described feeling left out during the trip, and appreciated that he didn't say anything too judgmental about her family. If he did, she'd have to defend them and she wasn't in the mood; she just needed to vent sometimes.

When the conversation lulled and the fries had long since been eaten, Gale leaned forward in his seat, fixing a serious look on Madge.

"Well. What are we going to do about this campaign thing?"

Madge felt something warm well up inside her at his reference to 'we.'

"Does that mean you support my father now?" she asked. It seemed to be the obvious threshold question.

"I don't know yet." Gale's jaw tightened again and he spoke reluctantly. "If it really is going to be your dad against some guy who's a puppet for those assholes at Snow, well, yeah I'd probably rather have your dad. I need to talk to some people I know to check on a few things I heard today, but—Madge, if you don't want me involved then that's it. I'm out."

"Really?"

Gale looked puzzled that Madge seemed so surprised. "Yes. Obviously. I mean, maybe I'd vote for your dad if he was the lesser of two evils, but I wouldn't go out of my way to help with strategy or whatever they were angling for." He leaned even further forward in his seat. "I don't like your uncle's games. I don't want to reward that kind of BS. So if you want me to tell them to take a hike, I will. Like you said, I'm not the only person who could help them. Whole state's full of miners and miner's kids."

Madge felt flattered, and strangely powerful. With a word, she could keep Gale away from the campaign, keep him away from her scheming family, and prove to her parents that she mattered, in some small way. But at the same time, she realized that she didn't want to. She'd seen how interested Gale was in her father's ideas, how attentively he'd listened to both her father and Haymitch during that meeting, and she had no doubt that her father would be better for Gale's family than someone like that Cato person. It didn't seem fair to either Gale or her father to be the only reason keeping Gale away.

"It's up to you," she said. "But if you do want to talk to Haymitch and my father some more, all I ask is that you keep it totally separate from me." She traced her finger along the edge of the table, dragging her fingernail through the grime-packed gap between the plastic trim and the wooden surface. "My family keeps blurring the line between our personal family business and my father's job, or really, the job he's trying to get. Maybe they don't think there should be a line, but I do." There had been, when she was younger. Why was it different now, just because she’d aged past some arbitrary number?

She looked up to see Gale leaning against the vinyl backing of his side of the booth, watching her so intently that she could no longer ignore the tickle of an idea she'd spent most of the afternoon swatting away: maybe Haymitch had been pushing that line where Gale was concerned, too. Maybe at least some of Gale's interest in the campaign was linked to Madge herself.

Then again, maybe not. She definitely wasn't his type and he was probably still hung up on Katniss. And he was entitled to be interested in the race for governor of his home state without Madge assigning any ulterior motives to his interest; he was more straightforward than anyone she knew, after all.

Either way, a line was essential. And she was relieved to see Gale begin to slowly nod, agreeing with her terms.

"All right," he said, not taking his eyes off hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry this update was so delayed!


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